


winter winds litter london with lonely hearts

by danlester (isaacmclahey)



Category: Phandom/The Fantastic Foursome (YouTube RPF)
Genre: Actor AU, Anal Sex, Daddy kink mention, Funfunfun, M/M, Make up Artist!Phil, Oral Sex, Theatre AU, actor!dan, aka the theatre au literally noone asked for lol, also, also if anyone is wondering ys i regret the fuck out of the long title, im not gonna tag all the characters, in the last bit, in the last bit as a joke its not a serious sex thing, leggo, mentioned Homophobia, mentioned depression, mentioned emotional abuse, ok, ok some warnings, stupid mumford and sons, there are a LOT of minor yt characters its like pokemon u gotta colect em all, theres some sex, uhh i think thats it it's generally quite a happy story ehen u take out the mentions, well its a happy story anyway but idk, yep there we go all good
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-03-04
Updated: 2016-03-11
Packaged: 2018-05-24 16:17:35
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 3
Words: 56,226
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6159411
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/isaacmclahey/pseuds/danlester
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>theatre au where dan is on stage with a main part for the first time & is super excited, but one thing he isn't happy about is the fact it takes 45 mins to do his make up (made better by the distracting - but kinda cute - make up artist with the pokémon tattoo) (phandom big bang, 2015)</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. part I

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> DISCLAIMER: I don't agree with any of the offensive language, prejudices or actions used for dramatic effect in this fanfiction, and I do not claim any of the people mentioned condone or perform these acts either. I also do not claim to know any of the people mentioned in the text beyond the persona they present to the internet, and therefore am not trying to suggest or deny anything about their personal lives in writing about them.

Musky stillness hung in the air on the first day of dress rehearsals, the tantalising scent of hairspray, perfume and dusty costumes reaching Dan in a waft of slight movement, along with a heavy feeling of finality. The crew had been rehearsing in the dance hall for weeks, and finally they were moving into the actual theatre; they had one week left before opening night, and there were only a few dress rehearsal opportunities still before them. This was Dan's first big role - the main character - on a West End stage, and he was still semi-convinced it wasn't really going to happen.

Years had led up to this moment, and he couldn't help but allow himself a small moment of sentimentality as a result, but instead received a punch on the arm as his co-worker, Carrie Hope Fletcher, walked past him, grinning.

"Move along, chump. We've got a rehearsal to get to."

Rolling his eyes jokingly, Dan moved forward through the stage area, his small backpack a comfortable weight on his shoulders, promising himself a moment to look and reflect later on, whilst everyone went on break.

"It's just... I can't _curtain_ my excitement." Dan could hear Evan half-cackling in the background at his own pun, followed by the sighs of several people around him. Dodie was the only person to let the pun slide, appearing to be in awe of the place, as was Dan, the grandeur and the reality setting in, and the nerves starting to take a hold on his sense of self.

As they all reached the back of the stage, and their bags had been deposited in a room behind it - where a lot of costumes were also being stored - they all started to crowd in a small circle before Jack. He was the guy who'd worked his way up from creating youtube videos to working on a performance on the West End, and a totally new one at that.

"Alright, team." He started, a little sarcastically, his voice raised to carry through the theatre, "We've got one run through this morning, no costumes, to get used to the stage and the positionings, then this afternoon we're doing a full dress rehearsal, no complaints. Starting in ten minutes, please sort yourselves into your positions, and we'll yell down when we're ready."

Hence, ten minutes of vaguely confused movement followed, ending with the cast on stage, ready to perform, and the technology crew still fiddling with the lights, although they'd promised not to turn them on mid-performance.

The main focus of the run through was to get used to the positionings of the stage, so they 'sped through' (basically Dean yelled down to skip to a certain line) scenes where they were mainly stationary, and managed to cut down their performance to just under two hours, rather than the usual three it took. It also saved a lot of the emotional parts at the end of the play, mostly placed on Dan's shoulders, so it - thankfully - gave him a break to prepare for the dress rehearsal in the afternoon.

Whilst everyone else moved into the back room to have a quick coffee and maybe a snack, Dan moved into the audience area of the theatre. His disappearance was not lost on the majority of the group, but he was let go anyway, as - at this point - they all knew each other well enough to know they should leave Dan alone when he wanted to be.

As he slid into a seat at the back of the theatre, staring up at the randomly lit stage at the front, remembering all the places he'd been on his journey here. Dan knew he was a fairly contemplative person, so he knew he couldn't lose himself too much in his thoughts, else he wouldn't be able to get into character later on as quick as is convenient. This meant he looked back on a few school performances, and the shitty little production of Hamlet that was in some basement theatre with about ten seats; the amount of rejection and self-doubt he'd been put through, some by his friends but often by himself, had finally reached a breaking point. His agent said that since the news got out that he was performing in a brand new play on a West End stage, his "Dangirls" were going insane, and people were sending him audition scripts left, right and centre. It was a crazy contrast - one that Dan almost couldn't believe - but he didn't have a lot of time to think it over before Jack was yelling down to him that he needed his final costume checks before the dress rehearsal that afternoon.

Reluctantly, Dan got up out of his seat, shrugging good-naturedly at Jack's joking hand gestures, mocking Dan's ability to get lost in his own thoughts, but shooing him into the back of the stage simultaneously. Everyone else appeared to already be there, so Dan sat down next to Carrie and Chris (the two cast members he felt he knew the best) and waited patiently for his turn to be fitted.

"Are we doing full make-up this afternoon as well?" He asked the pair as he settled, pulling his phone out to play a quick round of solitaire, only half-concentrating on the conversation they were having.

"Think so." Carrie replied, her smile tempting Dan out of his safe haven on his phone, and into conversation, "Yours is gonna be the worst, though. My hair covers most of mine and I'm pale enough to not need a full skin treatment."

"Yeah, my face is gonna be stiff as fuck with it all." Dan half-grumbled, although they all knew that he didn't really mind. "The eyeliner still freaks me out, though. How can someone just sit there whilst they get prodded in the eye?"

The other two both nodded in agreement, but they all knew it wasn't really a big deal in the grand scheme of things; it was just something to chat about to pass the time. They sat in comfortable quiet, waiting for the costume directors to sort themselves out, occasionally exchanging polite conversation and gossiping about general showbiz news. It took ten minutes for Dan to be called, at the same time as Chris, and the pair followed a sandy-haired guy with a clipboard, who directed them to a tall girl in the back room. She introduced herself as Eva, a tape measure thrown around her neck casually.

"He was definitely checking you out, mate." Chris muttered in Dan's ear, nodding towards the sandy-haired guy, who was trying to look busy as both heads not-so-subtly turned to look at him, his clipboard suddenly becoming very interesting, and he strode off with faux-purpose a few seconds later. "Was he up to the Howell standard of boyfriend material?"

Chris was one of the only people at the theatre who knew explicitly about Dan's sexuality, although a lot of people has presumed, as was often the way in the performing arts industry. It had come about in one of their first rehearsals, when Chris has confronted Dan about the few scenes they had together, and whether or not Dan intended to put that much sexual charge into them; as it turned out, it was totally intentional. This had led to an impromptu discussion about how they wanted their characters' relationship to come across, and some things were said on both sides that were irreversible.

It led to a lot of - often lewd - comments from Chris about the appearance of other guys, and Dan didn't really mind, apart from the occasions when he made it blatantly obvious in front of strangers.

Like now, for instance.

"Shut up." He muttered back, although he couldn't deny that he was interested. However, his attention was focused on Eva in that moment, her large smile and cheery outlook being the perfect distraction.

In a matter of mere minutes, Dan was in his costume, although it wasn't massively different from a normal outfit, just with a few special effects. Chris has wolf-whistled jokingly when he came out, and Dan had given him a playful glare, before waiting patiently for him to flirt with Eva whilst she picked out his clothes. Whilst Chris was changing, she checked over Dan's measurements, checking everything fitted and making sure nothing was uncomfortable.

The whole process took around ten minutes, before the two of them were moved onto the next stage of dressing; make up.

Chris was immediately swept aside by a smiley woman called Tanya, but Dan was directed (by the cute guy with the clipboard) towards a dressing table at the back, with the comment that "Phil's the only one that'll know what to do with you". The only indication that Dan was in the right place was the sheer multitude of make-up on the tabletop; apparently this was "Phil's workstation", but Phil didn't appear to be anywhere around, and it was setting Dan on edge a little as he sat down and began to fiddle with the various items on the table, reading the labels with vague interest.

"Shoot shoot shoot- Sorry!"

A tall, dark-haired man suddenly shot into the room, dodging other tables at speed, his cheeks a little pink with the obvious exertion of running through the room to get to him. Dan could only assume, when the dark haired man stopped beside him, panting slightly, that this was Phil; he smiled warmly as a greeting.

"I'm so sorry - Jack was talking to me about something, then I just got carried away and totally forgot I was supposed to be down here."

"S'fine - I was having a good time rummaging through your stuff anyway." Dan managed in response, his brain suddenly melting under the gaze of a pair of ethereal eyes, reminding him of the ocean waves in contrast to the creamy shade of his skin. Phil's height was coupled with terrible posture and a very particularly styled fringe, weirdly similar to Dan's own, his hands fixing it slightly after the mild exertion; Dan's eyes caught the chipped, electric blue nail polish on his long fingers as he did so, and it made him smile.

"Anyway," Phil muttered, clearly embarrassed by his lateness, "Let's get started - you know what I'm doing, yeah?"

"Vaguely."

"Right," Sitting down opposite Dan, Phil began to pull brushes and bottles to the front of his table, ready to use them, and turned to face Dan whilst he was applying a pale, creamy substance to one of his fingers, "I'll talk you through it as I go along, so you don't feel as much like a rag doll."

"Uh, thanks." Dan mumbled in response, surprised at the consideration that went into this proposal.

"Right, I'm just gonna rub in some moisturiser before I put the make-up on, so your skin doesn't dry out or have a reaction or anything." Cold fingertips were then on Dan's face, after a slight pause which allowed Dan to process what Phil was about to do, gently rubbing the substance over the entirety of his face before rubbing his hands on a towel beside him. "Whilst that soaks in, I'm gonna put a thin layer of paint on your neck, so the contrast isn't too noticeable."

Trying hard not to shiver, Dan steeled himself for the contact he was about to feel on one of the most sensitive areas of his body, his eyes sliding shut as the sponge touched his skin in a way that felt totally and indisputably odd. The glide of the sponge and the feel of the paint only lasted for about thirty seconds, before it was removed, and Dan let out a breath he had been holding the entire time.

This didn't go unnoticed.

"Is something wrong?"

"Oh, er-" Dan wasn't used to striking guys with blue nail polish and high cheekbones asking him these sorts of things, and it took a few moments for him to collect his thoughts, "No, I just, uh, my neck's just... sensitive."

"Oh." Phil nodded in understanding, swapping one sponge for another as he waited for the paint to dry on Dan's neck and for the moisturiser to settle in. "I'll, um, be a bit more careful next time, then."

"Ah, it's not really-" Dan bit his lip, not entirely sure how to explain it, fidgeting a little as he waited for the paint on his neck to dry (which was a rather strange feeling). "It's not really something you can avoid. Just, uh, don't make it any longer than it has to be, please?"

The 'please' came out a lot whinier than it was supposed to be, and Dan couldn't help but allow a small wince as he registered it; the close proximity between the two meant that this was painfully noticeable. Phil's eyes were understanding when Dan finally looked back into them, but he was already moving on with the make-up, a slight blush on his cheeks.

"Sure," Phil managed, before gently starting on the face paint, going for a paler look rather than Dan's usual tanned skin. It wasn't a dramatic difference, but combined with some grey bags underneath his eyes, the look made him seem a lot more worn out and broken than usual, which was perfect. Black eyeliner was applied, with a little red eyeliner in his waterline to enhance the exhaustion that he would soon have to play up. The process of shaping his face and generally making his physique look as dead as possible took about thirty minutes, combined with the shaping of Dan's hair, which changed to be almost a quiff, held together with a fuckton of hairspray.

All Dan could think about during these applications was the soft touch of Phil's fingertips as he held Dan's head in place; having makeup done by another person was always a little strange, but Dan had never really noticed the extent of the weirdness. Every time he felt Phil's fingers brush his skin, whether it be to hold him in place or to smudge a rogue flick of paint, he had to force himself not to shiver. Maybe it was because it was a guy?

The first guy that had done Dan's makeup was from a school production, where he was also the 'Director', and he was incredibly bossy; he wanted everything to be perfect, and anyone that didn't fit the mould was forced into place. Surprisingly, he had liked Dan a lot (perhaps because he was so eager to please), and they'd shared an awkward, tipsy kiss at the afterparty, before ignoring each other for the rest of their time at school.

Dan couldn't help but wonder where on Earth that guy had ended up - he could barely even remember his name - Dom? Tom? Tim?

Dragging himself back to the present, Dan just about managed to get a hold on reality before Phil's voice reached his ears.

"-so, is that okay?"

Dan blinked, focusing on Phil's face for a second, before he managed to communicate the fact that he hadn't been listening at all.

"Er, sorry?"

Phil didn't look annoyed, more... Exasperated. His tongue darted out from between his lips and wet them a little, mesmerising Dan a little, despite his desire to concentrate.

"I said, I'm about to paint a wound on your forehead, and the brush is gonna go pretty close to your eye, is that okay?"

"Oh, yeah, sure." Dan nodded, allowing Phil to start the intricate work on his forehead, the tiny paintbrush tickling a little. As Phil was suddenly a lot closer, leaning near Dan's face to focus on the outline of the wound, the details extending much further down his face, Dan suddenly had no idea where to look; Phil's face was obscuring the majority of his vision, and it would be really weird to stare at it, but there really wasn't much of a choice, except to look away at a desperately uncomfortable angle. However, as he was trying to find something inconspicuous to look at, his eye was caught on something bright on Phil's arm.

"Is that Pokémon?" He blurted out, proceeding to then desperately wanting to slap himself for a solid few seconds, before Phil's surprised laugh dragged him out of the momentary insanity. The surprise in his eyes caused an instant smile on Dan's face, the simple emotion was a relief from the acting hub of the theatre.

"Uh, yeah," Phil replied, taking a short break from his delicate work to roll his sleeve up a little to show Dan the extent of the tattoo; it was a cluster of Pokémon, all in fighting poses, approximately the size of the palm of Dan's hand. "I got it last year, to celebrate my 25th birthday. I've been told it's kinda sad, but I like it."

"It's awesome." Dan said, honestly, grinning as he marvelled at the craftsmanship. "Did it hurt?"

"Yep." Returning to the artwork on Dan's forehead, Phil continued the conversation in a much more jovial tone than before, "God, I wasn't expecting it to. Everyone jokes about how it doesn't hurt, so I wasn't really expecting it to, but hot damn did it kill."

"Hot damn?"

"The hottest damn."

Dan couldn't help but laugh at that, the absurdity of the comment allowing him a moment of confusion without guilt. However, the strangled sound came out of Phil's mouth made him freeze, his entire body going rigid as he realised that he probably caused Phil to smudge the painting he'd been working on.

"Sorry!" He stage-whispered, the softness of his voice being an attempt to emphasise his apologies.

"It's okay," Phil stage-whispered back, a small smile on his lips communicating that he wasn't mad, and was just taking the piss out of Dan's melodrama a little bit. "Just- don't move!"

"Okay."

Dan forced himself to look away from the tantalisingly pink lips in front of him and at the busy workroom behind, where Carrie was having her make up finished off by a woman with blonde hair and pink dip-dye, her laugh filling the small space, before she was shushed in much the same manner as Dan had been, in reprimand for moving.

"Next time," Phil's voice broke through Dan's inner thoughts a few minutes later, as he finished up, "I'll try and get this down to half an hour."

"Ah, it's fine." Dan mumbled in response, with a quick smile, brushing his clothes off a little as he stood up, the fake-dirt on them playing tricks with his eyes, "I'm used to it."

"Bet it never took someone-" The dark-haired man checked the time on his phone, "-Forty five minutes, though."

"True." Dan resisted the urge to ruffle his hair in awkwardness, knowing it would be stiff with hairspray, "I'll, uh, see you later then?"

"Yep." Phil began to dust off his brushes and rearrange the things on his table as Dan walked away, but Dan had a feeling that the awkwardness was felt both ways. It was all he could do to not sigh in relief as he left the room, not even noticing the tension that had been between them.

\--

Phil inwardly sighed as Louise poured herself another glass of wine - finishing the bottle - and leant back on the sofa. It wasn't that Phil didn't like Louise, heck, they'd been friends since Uni, but he was exhausted after the long day at work. Theatre work, whilst incredibly rewarding, was not a simple 9-5 job; it involved an early morning to prep the theatre, and staying late to clear up and pack away. This often lead to being at the theatre from 8am until 8pm, and it was intense. That was only during rehearsal period, too; when the shows began, it would be a 10am start to a 1am finish. However, it was diverse, exciting and busy, which was perfect for Phil. Except for one detail; it was now 10pm, and Louise hadn't left his flat yet.

"That Dan Howell guy is even cuter in real life," She began, after taking another sip of her wine and fixing Phil with a slightly piercing look, making it clear that Phil was going to have to participate in this conversation. "How was doing his make up? Did you swoon?"

"Er, no," Phil ignored Louise's jokily raised eyebrows, "His skin was ridiculously soft though."

"Really?" This definitely piqued Louise's interest, and she leant forward a little, "Is he seeing anyone?"

"How would I know?" Phil replied, defensively, finishing off the wine in his glass, "We didn't talk about that."

"What did you talk about then?"

Phil remembered very little of his conversation that wasn't him narrating what he was doing, which he mainly did to stop himself babbling any other nonsense.

"Uh, Pokémon?"

"Honestly, men."

"Eva likes Pokémon too!"

"That's because Eva's as mad as a box of frogs."

"That's sexist."

"What?" Louise spluttered, her alcohol levels contributing to the slightly off comments, "I never said that women couldn't like video games-"

"You implied it."

Louise groaned and let her head fall onto the back of the sofa, her glass almost empty, and her expression suggesting it might be time for her to leave. Her feet blindly sought out the shoes she'd slipped off an hour ago, her toenails painted chipped lilac.

"It's begun. The anti-social justice comments. I'd better leave, before I breach Donald Trump territory."

Phil loved Louise, but he was immensely glad for this declaration.

Seeing her out of the apartment took another ten minutes, making sure she hadn't forgotten anything, before she grabbed a taxi a few minutes down the road to her apartment.

Exhausted, it was all Phil could do to check his 6am alarm was on, and fall into bed, taking off his stiff jeans and dropping into sleep almost instantly. Brown eyes were the last thing on his mind before he drifted off, his dreams a blur of make-up, Pokémon and stage lights.

\---

The stage lights lowered; the props had been removed apart from the bed in the corner and the box of things that Kieran owned, and Dan (in character as Kieran) hurried over, beginning to pack the battered backpack in his hand, not noticing when Chris, as Aiden, walked onstage. Plain, white light was the only thing illuminating them, albeit on a low intensity setting.

"Kieran."

Kieran's head snapped back in shock, the guilt on his face undeniable as he met Aiden's eye; telepathic thoughts floating between them without the need for cumbersome, clunky words, which would only lead to tongue-tied confusion. These thoughts weren't enough.

"You picked her." Aiden said, simply, the silence that settled afterwards being painful and quiet, the truth slicing through the safe bubble they'd created in their relationship. The words in themselves were a weapon, and getting them out in the open was a cursed blessing.

Kieran didn't respond - he had nothing else to say - so he shrugged, and continued to throw things in a bag, but this clearly wasn't acceptable for Aiden.

"No, don't fucking shrug." He moved forward, stepping towards to Kieran and tugging on his jacket forcefully, forcing him to stand from his crouched position, "Don't fucking do this, Kieran. Eight years. Eight."

"I can't stay here." Kieran shoved his hands in his pockets roughly, kicking the backpack slightly so things stopped spilling out of it, and backing away from Aiden a few steps, "You know that."

"Yes, you can. You're fine. You're cured."

"Not-" Kieran shook his head, and lifted his hands in a motion for Aiden to back off. He did so, but only a little, "Not enough. I'm not human, Aiden."

"What does that even mean?" Aiden raised his voice a little, the frustrating in his tone rising from the undertone it had been reserved to, "You feel, don't you? You can talk? You've not gone insane, like the others?"

"It's only a matter of time."

"No." Aiden stubbornly took a step forward, despite Kieran's warning signs, his hands flailing a little, showing his obvious discomfort. Aiden took another step. "No. I'm not going to let you do this to yourself, Kieran. If you leave, you'll die. You can't do that to me. You can't do that to us."

Kieran's hands were still in the air, and a thought crossed Dan's mind in a heartbeat as he waited for their pre-planned silence to run out. Chris's hands were also in front of him, gesturing to the pair of them, and Dan made a split second decision; they'd agreed to play the pair as lowkey Gay As Hell™, and Jack and Dean didn't have a problem with it, but this would move that "lowkey" to very much "highkey". It was still a rehearsal, and it could always be rejected in their overview, so Dan decided just to go for it.

Meeting Chris' eye, Dan broke character for a few milliseconds so that he could flick his eyes to their hands, hoping to show what he was about to do. Chris gave the tiniest nod. Their allocated silence had used up it's time.

Slowly, Dan moved his fingers to Chris's, their hands still in midair, and he gently linked them together into a vertical handhold. After a few seconds, Chris returned the gesture, curling his fingers over Dan's, the shock on his face painfully believable. They were back in character.

The tension on stage could have been cut with a knife.

"That's exactly the reason I have to go." Kieran said, lowly, but his voice still filled the room, the silence heavy with their recent actions, before he gave a hollow laugh, his hand still in midair, but he gave it a look of slight distaste, as if he regretted it, "God, this is so fucking cheesy. You know why I'm doing this, Aiden. I can't stay here."

"You could-"

"Don't."

They waited for the five long seconds to do their time; it was the longest silence in the play, bar one, and it showed. The hand holding was awkward and their arms were at a strange angle, but it was supposed to be messy and unprepared; that, Dan hoped, was the beauty of it. The wind battered some windows in the room behind them, but everything else was silent; even the technicians.

"Okay." Aiden pulled his hand out of the grip quickly, trying to subtly wipe his face, before turning around on the spot and pacing a little, leaving Kieran to push his empty hands into his pockets with force. Aiden's footsteps echoed a little as he walked, before he stopped, suddenly, on the other side of the stage, "Okay. Are- are you going to tell- well, anyone?"

A few milliseconds passed before Kieran shook his head, and spoke.

"I figured it'd cause more harm than good, y'know? Better for everyone to just think I've gone rogue." He swallowed, taking a step forward, tentatively, "The only person I wanted to know, was you."

"What, because it'd be easier?" Aiden was suddenly furious, moving forward and into Kieran's personal space, the anger and pain he radiated causing Dan to start from behind his front, forcing himself to remember that Chris was acting, and the negativity wasn't directed at him. It was just hard to focus, sometimes, when Chris was this realistic. "Because then I don't still have to act like you've gone rogue? It's easier for you, sure, but no way in fucking hell is it better for me."

"I didn't want you to hate me." Kieran's voice sounded raw with emotion, and Dan was pleased to note he'd managed to waver his voice near the end.

"Well, I wish I could." Aiden snapped back, moving a few steps back, unforgiving to Kieran's emotion, "Eight years, we've known each other. We've been through all of this together. All of it. I cannot fucking believe you thought I could hate you. I cannot-"

But Aiden was running his hands through his hair at a manic pace, his eyes closed in obvious pain, and he left his words hanging.

"Just," He continued, after a few moments of quiet, expelling some air, "Just- I don't know. Don't...be an idiot."

A small smile started to grow on Kieran's face, and he dug his hands deeper into his pockets, before nodding a little.

"Okay."

"Okay." Aiden echoed, before sighing deeply and finally looking in Kieran's direction again. "You need to go before Iqra comes looking for you."

"I know."

Kieran slowly moved towards his backpack, continuing to put the last few things in his bag, his hands visibly shaking as he did so, turning his body a little so that the pretend-audience would be able to see this.

"Kieran-" Just as Kieran moved to leave, Aiden said his name, softly, from the doorway, one hand in a fist by his side and the other gripping the doorframe, his knuckles white, "I'm sorry."

The emotion Chris put into the word actually forced a lump into Dan's throat, which he was slightly grateful for, because the acting became a little more realistic.

"Me too." Kieran managed to choke out, swallowing hard and standing with his bag, slinging it on his shoulder, before nodding firmly in Aiden's direction and walking off the opposite side of the stage, his head down and his heart pounding.

-

He knew that Chris would stay on for a few more seconds before he walked off himself, following up with a scene in the main area with the other people in the bunker, and having to explain that Kieran had "gone rogue". It was Chris' biggest solo scene, and Dan loved standing and watching him work on it; it was fascinating.

He was joined by Dodie, who wasn't in the next scene, as he watched the story unfold from the wings.

"That was good." She commented, quietly, nudging him with her elbow, "Like, really good."

"Thanks." Dan smiled at her, but tried to simultaneously focus on what was happening on stage so that he knew when to move into place for the next scene.

"What made you think of it?"

"Dunno. Just saw his hand, and my hand, and went for it."

"Smart idea." She replied, giving Dan a side glance that he couldn't quite decipher, before allowing a smile to spread across her face, "Can't wait to see Jack's reaction."

A quiet groan and a soft "don't" slipped out of Dan's mouth before he could stop it, as he knew that this was the reaction she was expecting, although he doubted in actuality that Jack would have too much of problem. The scene on the stage was just getting heated, and Dan turned to look again, although he gave Dodie a small smile before he refocused, hoping that she would understand. Thankfully, she understood completely.

\---

Scenes with Chris were always exhausting in the best kind of way; it was easy in that they were in tune with each other enough to make it enjoyable, but they both challenged each other in the way that made it hard work. Chris was always stepping up their game by adding in tiny emotional extras or intriguing facial expressions, and Dan was always trying to match him. They both specialised in different kinds of acting, so it was hard for them to equal each other in those areas, which was the best kind of work. Dan hated working with someone who had the same acting strengths as he did, or who had way less experience.

This job was perfect.

As he finished up the rehearsal for that day, it was nearing 4:30pm, and all they needed to do now was the overview at the end; it was basically Jack, Dean, and whoever else happened to have an opinion, giving feedback for improvement the next day. Normally, it took about 30 minutes for them to go through Jack and Dean's notes, but today Dan feared it would be a little longer.

Dan didn't bother removing his make-up before going to the overview, hoping to charm one of the make up artists into giving him some remover before he left, so he wouldn't have to wear it on the tube home. He sought out Chris, who was switching his shoes over in their joint dressing room downstairs, before heading back to the stage so they could receive their feedback.

"Right." Dean announced, once Dan and Chris entered, apparently the last ones to arrive. "Not too much to report on the technical side today, I think we've pretty much got that nailed-"

At this, the bunch of technicians looked fairly pleased with themselves, and rightly so, because they'd all been given long lists for improvement every day so far this week. It was currently Wednesday, and they opened on Friday, so it was good to hear that at least one part was practically perfect.

"-Hair and make-up, too, seems fine-"

The 'Hair and Make-up' team took their turn to look pleased.

"The acting was the best yet, apart from our extras, who, once again, spent a little too much time looking at the other actors rather than focusing on their role-"

At this, Dan wanted to sink into the floor, and stay there forever; the theatre had put out a note for teenagers to come and be extras in the performance, and there were about 5 girls who'd gotten in, and who were apparently all 'Dangirls'. They stopped and stared every time Dan gave a line, and badgered him outside his dressing room as soon as he came out, and it was exhausting. Apparently Jack had given them all a 'talk' that morning, though, and it hard calmed them down somewhat. There hadn't been any lilts in today's performance and barely any stopping for awkward staring. Mostly.

"However, I think we all know what I'm going to say next."

Dan felt the anticipation hum in his bones, knowing that this was it.

Jack met his eye, raised an eyebrow, and leant forward in his seat, looking into the crowd of people sat in front of him in the front row theatre seats.

"Dan Howell?"

"Yes?" He managed, weakly, cringing as everyone turned to look at him. Carrie was openly smirking at him, and Chris was clearly stifling a laugh.

"What in God's name inspired you to grab Chris' hand?!"

Muffled laughter was now present, and Dan could feel his cheeks warming.

"I mean," Jack continued, shuffling his papers on his lap, a glint in his eye showing that he knew exactly what he was doing, and he wasn't annoyed at Dan at all, but merely loved torturing him so. "It was fucking brilliant, and that was the best performance we've had out of you - both of you - all week, but when did you decide you were gonna do that? Did you plan on telling us?"

"I, er, decided to do it about three seconds before I did it." Dan explained, clumsily, "I mean, Chris and I have talked about that sort of, um, relationship, between our characters before, and that's how we've been playing it, so I just thought, when we were out there, that our hands were pretty close together, and, well- yeah. I went for it."

There was a few moments of silence as the two mentors considered this, before Dean nodding, and asking-

"So, you're making a love triangle? Kieran doesn't know who he loves?"

"Well," Dan had to try hard not to get too defensive, as he knew this character through and through, and it felt like defending himself, "No. He knows he loves Aiden, but he can't. So he has to love Niamh. He knows who he loves, but he can't do that, so he picks her. He picks Niamh."

"Right." Jack said, thoughtfully, before turning to look at one of the head technicians, who also happened to be the scriptwriter, "That alright with you, Hazel?"

Hazel shrugged from her chair, a small smile on her face.

"No use asking me now, Jack Howard, you've been changing the script since the day I wrote it."

"Okey dokey." Jack spun back around in his seat, grinning at Dan. "That's settled. Love triangle it is."

Dan forced himself not to argue back against that, and merely accept that one of his edits had made it into the script, and tried not to feel too smug. Chris shot him a look that told him that he wasn't hiding it very well.

Despite a few minor acting qualms, there were very few adjustments that were to be made. Dean pulled out a list of 'Crap Acting Moments' per person, which were thankfully pretty short too, to look at that evening, before they were dismissed to go.

"Hey, come for a drink, mate?"

Dan's face apparently said everything for him.

"Aw, come on!" Chris protested, almost hitting a stage hand in the face as he spun around too quick, and quickly apologised, before spinning back around to hound Dan again, following him out of the room and down the narrow set of stairs, "One drink. You never come out."

Sighing heavily, Dan had a feeling he wasn't going to be able to wriggle out of this one. He'd refused a drink with Chris every night so far this week, and he knew that if he went out once, the number of offers would probably reduce a little, at least.

"Fine. One drink." Dan replied, after a silence of about ten seconds, leading Chris into the makeup room so that he could steal a makeup wipe, scouting one out from Louise's station after a few seconds of entering, "Because no way in hell am I turning up on the day before Opening Night hungover. There wouldn't be a Opening Night to speak of. Jack would murder me."

"Probably true." Chris admitted, a wide grin on his face, bouncing on the balls of his feet a little as he waited for Dan to scrape the impressive wound off his forehead. "Carrie says she can come too, but only for like, an hour, 'cause she has to Skype her brother early this evening, before they put the baby to bed."

"'Kay."

And that was how Dan found himself in the pub on Wednesday evening.

-

"Louise, look, I'm just too tired, I'm sorry."

The pair were piling props into a box from the stage, keeping them as separate in terms of when they were needed as possible, without spending too much time on it. After this, they had to go and sort out their workstations in the makeup room, and maybe help the technicians check everything was turned off and in its place. Darkness was around them, apart from the weak yellow light in the corner of the wings, so they both had to squint a little to make out what it was they were holding in front of them, but it set the tone for the chilly September evening that it was.

"One drink. One."

"That's what you say every time!"

Louise visibly considered arguing against this, before deciding it wasn't worth it.

"Okay, fine, but this time it really will be one."

Phil knew that he wasn't going to win, despite his vaguely pissed-off look and slumped body, shuffling the props in the box around so that they weren't too tangled. His knees were complaining from being knelt down for so long on the unforgiving floor, but he didn't have the energy to get up and stretch his legs before finishing the job, so decided to just get on with it.

"Fine. One."

-

"-and then he tells me that I'm the least talented person he's ever taught. Well, Mr Stilinski, suck on this: Chris Kendall, on a West End stage, in a brand spanking new play. I might send him a ticket out as a symbolic 'fuck you'."

"Go for it." Carrie responded, her grin infectious, before she started laughing at Chris' mini-sketch of his old Drama teacher, putting on an old-man voice and scrunching up his features so as to imitate his expression exactly.

Dan liked hanging out with his friends, but, dear God, it was exhausting. Actors and actresses are nearly always extroverted, and get their energy from other people, but Dan was the opposite, and was reaching the limit of how much interaction he could take before he needed to break for a refuel (and by refuel, he meant some time alone). This meant that he was having to speed-drink, and he knew it wouldn't be good for his stomach, as he hadn't eaten anything in over 6 hours.

As Dan was getting towards the end of his pint, he caught sight of the pub door opening, and watched as a group of the technicians walked in, including the guy - Phil - who did his makeup. He tried not to catch anyone's eye, else he knew he wouldn't be able to easily slip away, but Carrie had other ideas.

"Louise!"

"Hey, Carrie!" Louise ambled over to them, leaving the rest of her group at the bar, and stopping beside their table, grinning at the girl with the curly blonde hair. "Fancy seeing you here."

"Indeed! How come you're out of the theatre so late?"

"Why do you think? We don't get to knock off early like you actors! We've got to stay and tidy the place up, switch everything off, and all that. Work doesn't end for us when Jack stops talking." Louise laughed, clearly teasing Carrie, before asking her a bunch of questions about her personal life, and Dan zoned out a little.

Dan had never even thought about how the place got tidied and set up every day; he'd just kind of assumed that was done by magic pixies or something. How long must the working days be for the technicians if they had to sort everything out before and after hours?!

At this point, Phil had followed Louise to their table, weaving through the other seats, and had tapped Louise gently on the back, before asking her - presumably - what she wanted to drink. They had a brief conversation, before Phil was asked to wait until she was done to return, so he hovered.

"So," Louise continued, turning back from Phil to meet Dan's eye, quite unexpectedly, "This is Dan Howell, the one with the 'ridiculously soft' skin. I'm Louise Pentland."

She stuck out a hand for him to shake, which Dan took, albeit a little confused. However, that confusion faded when Dan caught sight of Phil's pained expression next to her, and he couldn't help the grin that split over his face, realising that it must have been a direct quote of Phil's.

"And Chris Kendall. Unfortunately, I don't know the status of your skin softness."

As Chris replied wittily, Dan couldn't take his eyes off Phil, who was now determinedly trying not to meet Dan's eye, and they both knew it. Finally, Dan relented, after almost half a minute of this game, removing his gaze from Phil's face, and tuning back into the conversation.

"-You're very welcome to join us, if you'd like?"

"Ah, no, it's fine, we've got our gang over there, so we'd better get back." Louise nodded towards the group in the corner, the two seats nearest to them empty and waiting.

"Ah, okay. Next time?"

"Sure, next time."

With that, and a few goodbyes, Dan was left to watch Phil's back retreating towards his table, shrugging off his little jacket and letting his tattoo peek out from under his shirt. It was almost unexplainable how intrigued Dan was about this new guy, but unfortunately he felt that he had an idea why.

This idea even allowed him to suffer through the merciless teasing of Chris and Carrie. Well, for a while, at least.

\---

"Jeez, mate, when are you gonna move out? You're a big ass theatre person now, surely you can afford to live somewhere better, where you aren't coming in at 9pm every night, disturbing the peace of our holy flat, and all its occupants. Some people are trying to be sensible and responsible over here, and you're just disrupting that with your hardcore 'one-drink' pub nights with your theatre pals."

Dan knew that Josh was only teasing, but he really didn't have the energy to deal with him right that second. The other man was stood in the doorway to the kitchen, smirking at Dan, a beer in his hand; Dan presumed he was taking a break from his report, as he could see his laptop open on a half-finished paragraph on the breakfast bar, clearly abandoned.

"Right. I'll be out by the end of the month." He mumbled, kicking his shoes off in the melée of shoes on the left hand side of the hall. It was true, he was still living with all his friends from Uni, but none of them had really needed to move away. Their friend Adam was the only one who left (for a job in America), and they'd just replaced him with Alicia, from Steve's psychology course, who had a job in London and needed a place to stay for the year. She was now (unfortunately) dating Josh.

"I think that'd be best." Josh said solemnly, before his face broke into a grin, "So, where were you this evening? Having a good time with Carrie?"

He said her name in a sing-song tone, and Dan desperately wanted to tell him to shut the fuck up, but that would cause more harm than good in the long run. He followed Josh into the kitchen and looked despairingly at the empty cupboards.

"Carrie was with us, but I'm telling you, there isn't anything there."

"You don't like Carrie Hope Fletcher? Jesus Christ, are you gay or something?"

Dan bit his tongue and leant into the fridge to try and find something to eat. Thankfully, there was some fresh pasta at the back from God-Knows-When (although it still looked edible), and half a tin of tomatoes from last night. By now, the pint was sloshing around inside him a bit, as he hadn't eaten since 1pm, and it was now 9:30pm; his temper was going to run short pretty soon, and Dan didn't want to know what would happen once it ran out.

"Obviously not. You remember Annabelle."

"Ah, Annabelle. The dreamiest of day-time television hosts." Josh put a hand to his forehead and pretended to swoon, but he could tell that Dan wasn't in a good mood, watching him quietly tip the pasta into the pan and ignite the stove, so he didn't push it. "I was gonna catch up with Game of Thrones this evening, have you watched the latest episode yet?"

"No, but I'm too tired tonight, sorry. We open in two days and Jack's being relentless."

"Not Dean?"

"Nah, Dean seems quite chill under pressure, but I have a feeling he's a quiet stressor. Jack's just quite vocal about it."

"Ah well, best of luck, mate. You gonna get us tickets for the opening night?"

Dan shrugged as he poked his pasta with a wooden spoon, moodily, waiting for the steam to appear. In theory, the pasta only took a few minutes to cook, but Dan could never even wait that long, and usually took it off as soon as the slightest hint of cooked-ness presented itself.

"You want tickets? I think I can probably wrangle two more, but I already got three for my family."

"Well, Steve probably doesn't wanna come anyway. Me and Alicia'll come though?"

"I can try, but I'm not promising anything."

"Well, no worries if not, mate. Just be cool to see, y'know." Josh's smile was back on his face, a sign that the teasing was going to come back, "Watching our little poof downgrade from that stellar production of Hamlet to this shitty, little West End stage-"

Dan couldn't help the groan that escaped his mouth, turning round to point the spoon at Josh semi-accusingly, trying to make his tone serious and failing as he complained about the mention of the dreaded H-word.

"We do not use that word in this household, young man."

"What - Hamlet?" Josh asked, innocently, and Dan couldn't help but narrow his eyes at him, before turning back to his pasta, giving up waiting and figuring it was probably soft enough anyway, draining it loosely into the sink and pouring the tomatoes in. However, this wasn't good enough for Josh, seeing his friend was still uptight and stressed, so he decided to push it a little further in the hope of getting a smile - or, God forbid, a laugh - out of him. "To be or not to be, that is the question!"

"Don't." Dan had his back turned, but Josh knew he wasn't mad. They'd lived together for almost four years now, and Josh had been on the same course as Dan, so they both knew each other pretty well. Almost too well, Dan thought sometimes, but they spent less time together now that Dan had his show, and that felt a bit more normal.

"This above all, to thine own self be true-"

"Watch it, Joshua Beckett."

"I thought you were going to fall into my lap during the first act, when you stepped too far forward during the sword fight. It really was an educational experience-"

"At least I wasn't in the pantomime!" Dan finally whirled around, a taunting grin on his face, and Josh instantly felt a whole lot better. The world wasn't right when Dan was moody.

"How dare you!" Josh grinned back, mocking being offended, but swinging himself back onto the seat at the breakfast bar and getting ready to write again, "That was a gift to the world, I'll have you know."

Dan snorted, before heading back into the fridge to find some cheese, and attempting to assemble his dinner in a cracked, Ikea bowl.

"Yeah, sure. You singing 'What a Wonderful World' is a gift I'm not gonna forget anytime soon."

After a few moments of messy assembling and finding a fork in the confusion of the dishwasher, Dan put his stuff up on the breakfast bar next to Josh and peered over his shoulder, a lot more relaxed now that he had food in his hands.

"Whatcha writing about?"

"Poverty." Josh replied, in a dull voice, typing slowly and carefully, "When do I ever write about anything else?"

"I dunno. The other week you wrote about football?"

"I wrote about that footballer saving kids from poverty by starting a football club in Africa somewhere. That's still poverty."

"Maybe it's just your specialist subject?" Dan replied, weakly, before leaving Josh in peace and eating his meal, watching the cat on the opposite side of the street through the window as it tried to claw open the bin bags and failed. It was quite an intriguing and tense scene to watch, surprisingly, and Dan realised he'd finished his dinner a lot quicker than he expected, and was now just sat watching this cat try - and fail - to complete its task.

After a solid five minutes of this, Dan shook himself out of this weird trance he'd gotten himself into, shoved his plates in the dishwasher and headed upstairs, pulling out his phone as he started climbing and opening a few texts he'd received that afternoon.

As he entered his room, shutting the door behind him as he did so, he flopped down on his bed dramatically and sent separate texts to his Grandma, Chris, and Dean, who were all enquiring about his health, his job or his love life in one way or another. Just as Dan was about to put the phone down and pull out his laptop to check the latest reviews for the last Game of Thrones episode, and possibly watch it if the results were positive, he got another text from Carrie.

 **Carrie 22:07**  
**oh. my. god. if you're not going**  
**to take that piece of eyecandy**  
**from work, can i?!? xxx**

**Dan 22:08**  
**u have a boyfriend carrie**

**Carrie 22:09**  
**THEN TAKE THIS ONE FOR ME xxx**

 **Dan 22:09**  
**wait who r u talking abt??**

**Carrie 22:10**  
**phil!! from the bar!!!! xxx**

**Dan 22:10**  
**carrie u know im not into dudes**

**Carrie 22:11**  
**honey i don't know who u**  
**think ur fooling but it**  
**certainly isnt me xxx**

**Dan 22:12**  
**haha no srsly**

**Carrie 22:12**  
**fine, but think about it!! he**  
**seems nice, and he defo**  
**liked u xxx**

**Dan 22:13**  
**really?!**

**Carrie 22:13**  
**YES!! he'd obvs been talking**  
**abt u to louise, and he kept**  
**blushing when u were lookin**  
**at him!! and it wasn't just him**  
**being starstruck trust me xxx**

**Dan 22:14**  
**u sure?? im p easy to be**  
**starstruck by ;)**

**Carrie 22:14**  
**dont be an ass dan howell x**  
**i'm just saying you would be**  
**cute together!! much better**  
**than that annabelle girl xxx**

**Dan 22:15**  
**hey, i liked annabelle?!**  
**and anyway, it would be**  
**waay too weird - i have**  
**to see him every day ?**

**Carrie 22:15**  
**at least tell me you'll think**  
**about it??? you won't see**  
**each other after the play**  
**finishes anyway xxx**

**Dan 22:16**  
**fine. x**

**Carrie 22:16**  
**that kiss didn't make that any**  
**less rude mr howell but i'll**  
**accept it anyway xxx**

**Dan 22:16**  
**:)**

 

Dan didn't have the energy to continue, and simply left it at that; Carrie would understand.

After organising with Dean about getting a few extra tickets for Friday (and lowkey harassing Dodie about her family's plans in the process), Dan managed to get enough for all of his friends to come, although he doubted that they'd all be that keen once they actually got there.

The main thing that was nagging in the back of his mind was how they would take the whole "Kieran and Aiden" thing; it wasn't that they were outrightly homophobic (basically they didn't want gay people dead, just preferably not anywhere near them), but Dan had a feeling they probably wouldn't let it slide for at least five months. And that's just for the constant teasing - the infrequent teasing would last for years.

Sighing, Dan moved his thoughts to the dark haired man at the bar that night.

Despite his crippling awkwardness and inability to hold a conversation, Dan really had wanted Phil to sit with them at their table. For starters, it would have made tomorrow morning less weird.

And for another reason: he was really fucking interested.

Normally, Dan had fleeting crushes on guys. As in, daydreamed about guys he saw on the street for a few days, maybe even a few hours, until he saw a new one, or found a cute girl in Starbucks to stare at instead. They were fleeting, and superficial, and they were never built on anything real.

But this time, Dan liked Phil.

Sure, he was attracted to him; the striking black hair, white skin, sharp cheekbones and electric blue nail polish was enough to have him staring, but, in addition, Phil was a massive fucking dork. A Pokémon tattoo? That's serious commitment right there. And Dan didn't doubt that there were a million other video games hidden up that man's sleeve, not to mention the fact that he was sure he saw a well thumbed copy of The Hobbit in his open backpack by the table.

He'd have to push forward tomorrow morning if he wanted to make anything of it, but Dan was simultaneously dying to pursue it, and terrified. Yeah, it's fun to have a daydream, but what if things happened? Dan couldn't imagine introducing Phil to his friends, or his family, or waking up to him making breakfast in the mornings.

It would be a lot of fun, Dan was sure, but it would never be serious. They could never have a real relationship.

Maybe after two years with Annabelle, that's just what he needed?

Dan went to bed sans Game of Thrones and with a slight headache, trying not to think about the man with black hair and blue nail polish, and failing.

-

Groggily, Phil fumbled for his phone, desperately trying to turn off the damn alarm. He needed to get up now if he was going to get to work on time, but he spent so long last night texting that his head felt ready to implode.

Whilst trying to forget The Incident at the pub (that Louise had been thoroughly chastised for), Phil had succumbed at 2am and had texted his ex-boyfriend, Mark, hating himself even more when he got a reply. Louise would probably hit him forcefully over the head if she knew, but she wasn't going to. It was a random night of desperation, and it was not going to happen again. Probably.

There was a text from Louise that contained an obnoxious "Rise and Shine!!!" with some emojis, which Phil rolled his eyes at, but he got up anyway. His shower was brief, but the rest of the morning went quicker, the dread he felt about seeing Dan again clearly speeding everything up.

"Morning!" Louise beamed at him from her station, when he arrived an hour and a half later, arranging her make-up, clearly trying to make up for last night. Phil returned her smile carefully, but she saw how tired he was anyway, and came over almost instantly, "What's up?"

"Nothing." Phil slung his backpack onto the floor by his station, loosely shuffled things into their place, but didn't bother to do anything specific, as things would just mess themselves up anyway. "Just didn't sleep too well last night."

The guilt on Louise's face almost made him want to tell her the truth, but he thought he should force her to feel the burn a little longer before he let her know his shame.

"Ah, well," She mumbled, a little awkwardly, "Maybe Dean'll make Jack relent a little today?"

"I doubt it."

Louise hovered for a moment before bobbing to her desk and back, placing a small white and green cup on Phil's station, and quickly moving into the hall to the main stage area. When Phil took the lid off, he saw the telltale contents of a Caramel Macchiato. It was a peace offering.

When he finally finished his sulking and cleared his desk up, he followed Louise's trail and began to help set up, his watch telling him that it was 8:30 by now, and the actors should be arriving any time soon. They'd gotten into the routine of a 10:00am start for the dress rehearsals, and these would be hardcore rehearsals with everyone giving it everything; they were exhausting. Phil normally began Dan's make up at 9:00am, to give him time to prepare afterwards, but also not leaving it long enough that Dan would accidentally rub his eye or something.

9:00am seemed like a bit of a death sentence.

But then again, when something horrible was coming up, time seemed to sense this and throw away seconds, minutes, and hours as recklessly as possible. Soon, it was 9:05am, and Phil was running late, and, despite his desperate procrastination, he was still going to have to do it.

Turning the corner, and seeing Dan sat at his table on his phone, a face of concentration playing on his features, made Phil want to sigh heavily. Damn it.

"Morning." He mumbled, as he shuffled closer, disposing of the empty Starbucks cup in the rubbish bin below, and organising his bottles into the order he'd need them as he tried not to obviously avoid Dan's eye.

"Morning." Dan replied, pleasantly, pushing his phone back into his pocket after a few moments and turning back to face Phil, "Sorry about that, I was about to beat my high score on Solitaire."

Surprised, Phil's eyes jumped up to meet the warm, brown ones in front of him, and tried to hide his smile.

"I didn't realise it was a competitive game."

As he rubbed the moisturiser into his fingers, preparing himself for touching Dan's skin, he was relieved to notice that Dan was grinning back at him, the fact that they pushed themselves over the awkwardness barrier clearly a relief for him too.

"Obviously. What would the point be otherwise?"

"I don't know, to enjoy it, maybe?" Phil smirked at Dan's eye-roll, before raising his fingers and saying, "This might be a bit cold."

"I'm sure I can handle it."

They both pretended Dan's tiny flinch was from the cold, anyway, and bravely plunged headfirst into the next stage in their friendship.


	2. part II

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> It was Opening Night.
> 
> It was actually happening. Like, oh Sweet Holy Fucking Jesus, it was happening.
> 
> Dan was used to this feeling; the total and utter paranoia and fear and crippling panic, but it didn’t make it any easier. It also didn’t help that his parents, brother, and his three flatmates were sat in the audience amongst a sea of critics. At least with Hamlet, he knew every person in the room, just about.
> 
> Now it was a kaleidoscope of faces, each with thoughts and feelings and opinions.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> DISCLAIMER: I don’t agree with any of the offensive language, prejudices or actions used for dramatic effect in this fanfiction, and I do not claim any of the people mentioned condone or perform these acts either. I also do not claim to know any of the people mentioned in the text beyond the persona they present to the internet, and therefore am not trying to suggest or deny anything about their personal lives in writing about them.

t was Opening Night.

It was _actually_ happening. Like, oh Sweet Holy Fucking Jesus, it was happening.

Dan was used to this feeling; the total and utter paranoia and fear and crippling panic, but it didn’t make it any easier. It also didn’t help that his parents, brother, and his three flatmates were sat in the audience amongst a sea of critics. At least with Hamlet, he knew every person in the room, just about.

Now it was a kaleidoscope of faces, each with thoughts and feelings and opinions.

Trying to suppress the bubble of hysteria in his throat, Dan left the side of the stage where he’d been hovering, managing to peek at the audience through a side door like a schoolchild, and hating himself for doing so. He moved towards the only place he felt he could keep his cool; the make-up room. By now, Phil was busy off being a stagehand - as was Louise - but Tanya, Eva and Sophie were still here, clearing up their messes and chattering away to each other, the success of the night not resting on their shoulders. Unsurprisingly, Dan found Carrie sat on one of the chairs, texting, kind of involved in the girls’ conversation, but not really.

“Hey.” Dan slid into the chair beside her, his smile communicating his worry, and his eyes finding her nerves in the creases of her face instantly. “You alright?”

“Yeah, not too bad, you?”

“Could be better.” There was a short pause. “How much longer?”

“We need to be thoroughly prepared - as in, ready to go on - in twenty minutes. Starts in thirty.”

“Right.”

After a few moments of quiet, Carrie leant her head on Dan’s shoulder, their heights meaning they slotted together perfectly. Feeling her heart beating was kind of reassuring, although it was frustrating to watch her play Candy Crush and fail so epically.

With fifteen minutes to go, Dan headed down to his dressing room, greeting Chris weakly and plugging a Muse song in to try and calm down. The music and the words filled his brain almost to the brim, the volume alone worrying him about whether he would be able to hear anything on stage in a few minutes. Somehow though, he couldn’t quite finding the energy to care.

The blood was pumping around his body at a tantalising tempo, and he almost couldn’t breathe, letting himself get lost in the song, before reluctantly unplugging and moving towards the door, just in time to hear his call to the stage. Even the stairs up seemed like too much of a task in that moment, and Dan remained undeterred by the enthusiastic thumbs up Dean gave him as he walked past, slightly ruined by the stressed expression on his features, but appreciated nonetheless.

Darkness surrounded him on stage as he positioned himself on his tiny piece of tape in the centre, looking down at the floor on his own, listening to the scuffle of the technicians’ shoes and preparing himself for the spotlight.

This was it.

He allowed his expression to flicker into one of total removal and blankness, and waited patiently for the sound of the technicians shuffling to stop, and the feeling of hushed silence to fall upon him. When it finally happened, he forced himself to keep his gaze firmly on the black, scuffed floor, the curtains gently hitting the sides of the stage with a ‘thump’, and the spotlight illuminating him with a miniscule click.

Over five hundred pairs of eyes were on him in that moment, the ringing in his ears finally fading into silence.

_Holy shit, you’re on stage._

And so it went.

-

“DANIEL!”

Dan was buzzing, like there was helium in his lungs and delirium in his mind, spinning to see his flatmates pushing through the crowd of the afterparty to see him. The briefest moment of concern flashed across his mind, but the red wine that had oozed into his conscience and calmed his nerves, bringing him up to a state of almost-bliss.

“Hey!” Dan grinned as they came closer, turning back to Chris and Carrie to introduce them, “Chris, Carrie, these are my flatmates-”

He gave them a quick look as he turned to look at them as if to say “don’t fuck around” (in particular to Josh, who was already visibly excited about meeting Carrie), before saying each of their names in turn, and waiting for them to play out the pleasantries.

“We’ve heard so much about you!” Josh said, grinning, shaking Chris’ hand and kissing Carrie on the cheek, before muttering something in her ear, which she raised an eyebrow at, but laughed politely when he moved away.

The others played out a similar routine, after which there was a small pause. Thankfully, Chris jumped in to save the moment, and Dan was ready to kiss him for it; he’d been semi-dreading this moment, because each set of friends was so different, but he hoped the alcohol and general merriment would act as a sort of 'social lubricant’, if you will.

“So, what do such a handsome bunch do for a living?” Chris asked, winking at Josh particularly as he said it, some part of him knowing that it would make him the most uncomfortable in the group.

There was a moment of visible confusion as Josh blinked at the flirty gesture, before managing to form a sentence surprisingly quickly. He was gripping his beer tightly - as tightly as his desperate grip on his masculinity, Dan thought, in his slightly tipsy mind, even though he’d barely drank any wine so far.

“I, uh, write bits and pieces for The Times. Mostly about poverty, which isn’t exactly a riot, but hopefully it’ll give way to something a bit better at some point.”

After a few enquiries, they moved onto Steve.

“Uh, I’m a psych graduate, so I diagnose people for a living.” Steve volunteered, smiling, apparently unaffected by Chris’ earlier comment. Either that, or he was good at hiding it. “Well, I do the paperwork for it at the moment, but within the next couple of years I hope to start running some therapy sessions myself.”

“Yeah, careful you don’t hang around him too long,” Dan cut in, trying to lighten the mood, “He’ll diagnose you with ten different things in two minutes 'for practice’.”

Thankfully, everyone laughed, but Dan was still praying that this wouldn’t take a sudden turn. After Alicia introduced herself, they should be able to break apart and Dan would go and shuffle them aside for a chat, hopefully roping in his parents on the way. His parents liked Josh, but after a quick introduction before the show, it was clear they were extremely unsure about Chris. Which, in all honesty, was probably fair enough.

“I’m also a psych grad, but I decided to screw my education, and now I’m in the arts business. I’m working at the Tate.”

Time to prepare the glamorous exit. Dan opened his mouth, but Carrie clearly had other ideas.

“Oh, wow - that must be so interesting! What kind of things do you do?”

“Well, I mainly just help organise things behind the scenes, see, my sister works as the museum curator, and she got me the job,” Alicia had had half a glass of wine by now, and Dan knew from experience that she could talk about art for eons if left uninterrupted, which - whilst inspiring - would definitely elongate the conversation a tad, “But, yeah, we organise the new exhibits and things. It’s pretty cool.”

“So you get to see things before they go out on display?” Carrie was carefully sipping her drink - some fruity concoction that Chris was also holding - but she looked so genuinely interested in what Alicia was saying that Dan didn’t really want to wrench them away. But then again, he didn’t want to leave, in case there was a minor trainwreck whilst he was gone.

“Dan!” Dean’s voice called through the crowd, a small way off, and Dan spun a little, catching his eye and recognising the 'come here’ expression on his face. It was clear that there wasn’t going to be any getting out of it, despite his fear of disaster.

“Sorry guys, back in a minute.” He quickly excused, although everyone was mainly listening to Alicia talk about art. Josh sent him a surprised look, perhaps that Dan was leaving them so soon, but didn’t protest.

“Hey, what’s up?” Dan asked, when he reached Dean, but was quickly turned to face a line of people, all with serious looking faces, and a very pleased looking Jack.

“These are just a few of the critics who attended this evening.” Dean introduced them, with his 'posh’ voice on, running through their names politely, “They just wished to congratulate you on your performance this evening.”

Dan let an easy smile conquer his face as he shook each hand in turn; he knew this moment was coming, but he didn’t expect it to be so soon.

It only took half an hour for him to escape the bubble of critics.

Surprisingly, a few of them were fairly likable, and they were incredibly generous with their comments about Dan’s performance, but Dan eventually did have to excuse himself, for fear that his friends had eaten each other alive. More specifically, Chris having eaten the others. Brutally and publicly. With zero remorse.

Before he found them, however, he was caught on the sleeve by Louise, who, after a cheeky smile, dragged him into their conversation.

“Who were the fancy looking folk?” She asked, wiggling her eyebrows, and Dan knew that she already knew, but she just wanted him to say it. He couldn’t help but like Louise, some guttural part of him drawn to her positive radiance and shining personality.

“Uh, Daily Mail, The Telegraph, Heat, some London magazine I’d never heard of, and the Metro.”

“Do any of these people have names?”

“Uh,” Dan tried, but the wine was getting to his memory and the names blurred into a mess of syllables. “Not that I remember.”

She laughed at that, before turning back to one of the other technicians, who was wearing an anime shirt - Dan later learned that he was called Duncan - and encouraged him to tell him to tell Dan the story “with the goose and the casino”.

So much for getting back to his friends.

-

“Hey, you alright?”

Dan was sat on one of the sofa-like chairs in the room, and he was half-concentrating on a story Carrie was telling to Steve and Alicia, but he was sure his eyes were glazed over a little. The trio were sat on chairs next to the sofa, so Dan wasn’t directly involved, but he felt included enough. Surprisingly, it was a new voice that asked this question, and when Dan looked up, ebony hair was the main thing he noticed, as the person sat down next to him on the sofa.

“Why wouldn’t I be?” Dan answered, carefully, knowing that his alcohol levels were near his breaking point, and he should probably make an effort to watch what he was saying. “I’m top notch. Full gusto. Totally awesome.”

Phil laughed a little at Dan’s obvious intoxication, but he continued the conversation anyway, leaning back into the sofa and resting his glass on his knee.

“Well, good to hear. I just wanted to say well done for your performance today. You… weren’t too bad.”

Dan’s eyebrows raised involuntarily, but his grin was infectious and crooked.

“Not too bad? I bet I made you cry.”

“Well-” Phil elongated the word, childishly, but he wasn’t denying it, “Maybe _one_ tear. Or two.”

“Wow. Two whole tears.” Dan pretended to use his empty wine glass as a statue, “This award means so much to me, you can’t imagine - I’d like to thank the Academy, and I’d like to thank my Mom, for always being there for me-”

“It’s Mum, not Mom. We aren’t American, Dan.” Phil was clearly amused, allowing Dan’s name to roll around on his tongue like a hard-boiled sweet, the feeling strange and slightly foreign but accompanied by a sharp tang of flavour.

The gentle teasing wasn’t new, but it was different when they’d both had a few drinks. Things were looser, freer; there were fewer boundaries. Well, fewer boundaries that they both remembered, anyway. Dan’s eyes were shining with the effects of the alcohol, and he’d undone the top buttons on his shirt, discarding his blazer somewhere in the room, that he would no doubt get given back on the next day of rehearsals. Meanwhile, Phil was still relatively composed, his jacket on and his black t-shirt on underneath, still in the places they were at the start of the evening, but the outfit generally allowed more of a casual approach anyway.

“Well, it just doesn’t sound as good if I say 'mum’. All the proper actors say mom.”

“Well, be a pinnacle in award history and say 'mum’, then.”

“It’s not the same.” Dan protested, childishly, but he couldn’t help but laugh at the expression on Phil’s face in response. “You know it isn’t. Quit giving me that look.”

“If you say so, Dan Howell.”

“Indeed I do, Phil Lester.”

Somehow, their conversation turned to television shows, and Phil’s adoration of Buffy the Vampire Slayer suddenly came into play.

“As in, Mastermind subject level?”

“Oh, yep.” Phil nodded, eagerly, his love for Buffy finally having a place to shine, “I could probably recite most episodes if I had the time.”

“Okay, what about the first episode from season three?”

“Well, that’s the episode where Buffy runs off to the city to be 'Anne’, and it starts with… Okay, I remember - Willow and Xander hunting whilst Buffy’s gone, and I think Willow says 'That’s right big boy, come and get it’ to the vampire.”

“Holy shit, wow, okay.” Dan didn’t think he’d met anyone with that level of dedication to anything ever. Sure, there was a girl in his GCSE Maths that could recite the first page of Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows, but she was generally just a genius, so it didn’t seem too much of a stretch for her. Phil, on the other hand, seemed terrifyingly normal.

“I know, it’s weird as fuck.” Phil replied, clearly a little embarrassed about what he’d done, his expression betraying his emotions even before his tone of voice did. Dan had to force himself to ignore the jolt in his stomach as Phil’s soft voice curled itself around the swear word, focussing instead on the conversation.

“No, no, it’s cool. It’s just-” Dan couldn’t find a word that was appropriate enough. “Okay, yeah, it’s weird. But it’s a cool kind of weird.”

“Er, thanks, I guess.” Phil laughed, nervously, his long fingers fiddling with the stem of his glass, “What’s your weird talent, then?”

“Ah, I don’t really have any.”

“You must do! Everyone has a talent.”

“I guess I can play a bit of piano.”

“Oh, cool! What grade?”

Dan hated this question. With a passion.

“Er, I don’t really know, actually. I did a bit with a teacher but I mainly taught myself, so I’m not really at any grade.”

“Oh, right,” Phil smiled at this, unable to avoid picturing a young Dan, bent over a crappy school keyboard, learning Chopsticks, “You’ll have to play for me sometime. It sounds cool.”

“Sure, but you better like a very small selection of Radiohead and Muse songs.”

Phil looked like he’d been electrified a little at that, and sat forward, eagerly.

“Oh my God, you like Muse?”

“Um, how could I not like Muse? They’re incredible.”

And from here, the hours turned into minutes, and the minutes into seconds. People moved and changed around them, but the pair didn’t follow, animatedly pushing the conversation backwards and forwards until they felt dizzy and tired, exhilaration keeping their heads afloat.

-

“That’s insane.”  
  
“ _You’re_ insane.”  
  
“I’m not insane! _You’re_ the insane one.” Dan was betrayed by a hiccup mid-sentence, causing him to take an outward look at himself, and sat up a little straighter as a result, “Shit, I should probably be getting home.”  
  
It was now past 2am, and people had begun to leave at quite a steady rate in a short space of time. This slightly emptier room allowed him to see his friends shrugging on their jackets by the door, and he knew it would only be a matter of time before someone came over to 'get’ him, probably only just on the right side of drunk. No doubt Dean was on rounds, telling theatre people to go home now, so they weren’t too tired and hungover for tomorrow.  
  
“You probably should.” Phil replied, but made no move to leave either, instead they were both just sat, staring quite intently at each other’s faces, the world around them spinning slowly in a haze of black matter. Slowly, Phil reached out and touched Dan’s loose shirt cuff, on the hand that was holding the long-empty glass, the material soft beneath his fingers. “That’s a strange print for a shirt.”  
  
“I hate moths.” Dan said, quietly, watching Phil’s fingers trace a moth outline slowly on his wrist, “They scare the shit out of me.”  
  
“Then why did you get a shirt with them on?” Both of their voices were soft as whispers, but loud enough that they could still communicate. They were both staring at Phil’s fingers, half-dreading the moment their eyes would meet again and they’d have to go back to real world of Being Responsible and Going Home.  
  
“I dunno. Face your fears?”  
  
“Right.” Phil swallowed, and looked up, forcing their eyes to meet, “Dan-”  
  
“Dan!” Josh was suddenly a few feet away, and the pair of them moved apart so fast it could have been mechanical. Whilst Josh’s eyes were bright with the alcohol, they were also extremely suspicious, watching the pair of them with a strange expression, before shaking himself out of it, “Let’s go, man. Alicia’s falling asleep on Steve, and you’ve got work tomorrow.”  
  
“Yeah, sure, I, uh-” Dan looked around a little, but realised it was no use trying to find his blazer; he could have lost it anywhere. Standing up, he explained his mild confusion. “I dunno where my jacket went, but I’ll probably get it tomorrow. I’ll, uh-”  
  
He turned to look at Phil.  
  
“See you tomorrow, I guess?”  
  
“Yeah.” Phil was smiling, but his body was rigid against the sofa, and his knuckles were a lot paler than they should have been, “Bright and early.”  
  
Laughing politely, and then giving Phil a small, dorky wave, (which he instantly regretted, and he knew that Phil knew) Dan followed Josh back through the crowd, his head still spinning slightly, partially from the alcohol and partially from the possibilities behind the word ’ _Dan_ -’. Part of him hated Josh for wrenching him out of that situation, but the logical part was unbelievably grateful; what the fuck would have happened if they’d been left to their own devices?  
  
As he allowed himself to be dragged out of the theatre and into the dark, harsh reality of London, he pulled out his phone, finding a few texts from Carrie after several attempts to unlock his phone.  
  
 **carrie 01:34  
hey, i’ve got your jacket, in case  
you were wondering. figured you   
wouldn’t have gone looking for it,  
so i picked it up. saw you and phil  
together on the sofa earlier - hope  
you had a good time ;) xxxxx   
  
carrie 01:36  
p.s. i think your friend josh thinks   
ur secretly in love w/ me?? i didn’t   
wanna tell him abt phil in case u still   
weren’t sure but u really need to tell  
him smth bcs he was making weird   
jokes all night xxxxx  
  
carrie 01:36  
p.p.s. WHY DIDNT U TELL ME U  
WERE IN HAMLET??? xxxx  
**  
Dan was going to kill Josh.  
  
He looked up from his phone to see Josh, all six foot three of him, pick up Steve in his arms - bridal style - with apparent ease, before pretending to throw him into the Thames.  
  
Okay, Dan was still going to kill Josh, but just in the morning.  
  
After some careful planning. And any possible back up had been arranged.  
  
(On a totally unrelated topic, Dan made a mental note to himself to check his life insurance, and call his Grandma, possibly for the last time.)  
  


–

**unknown 08:10**

**hi, who is this??**

Dan felt the buzz of his phone before he heard the tone, but it didn’t make the awakening any less rude. As he rolled over in bed, he unplugged his phone and squinted at the screen, the foreign number merely a blur. His hair was all over his face, and he was sleeping in the shirt from last night and his boxers. It appeared that he’d attempted to undo the shirt, but had lost motivation on the third button, and left it on instead. This new number made him slightly wary, but he was too sleepy to be overly cautious about it.

> **dan 08:11**
> 
> **it’s dan, who’s this?**

**unknown 08:12**

**ah, i thought so, i just wanted to  
** **check :) it’s phil!**

> **dan 08:13**
> 
> **oh hi! not to be rude (maybe to  
> ** **be rude? it’s early) but how on  
> ** **earth did you get my number?**

**phil 08:13**

**you wrote it on my hand last night,  
** **i think? either that, or someone else  
** **really wanted me to have your phone  
** **number haha**

> **dan 08:14**
> 
> **oh haha i dont remember doing  
> ** **it but tbh i dont doubt it - what are  
> ** **you doing up at this ungodly hour?!**

**phil 08:15**

**getting ready for work? omg are  
** **you still in bed im so sorry**

> **dan 08:15**
> 
> **haha nah it’s fine i needed to get up  
> ** **anyway - how early do you go to work  
> ** **tho jfc**

**phil 08:17**

**i try to get there for 9:30 on a good  
** **day - when do you get up?!**

> **dan 08:17**
> 
> **well first thing of the day is make up  
> ** **with u on dress rehearsal days and  
> ** **thats abt 10ish so i normally get up  
> ** **abt half nine**

> **dan 08:17**
> 
> **so abt the time u get to work im rolling  
> ** **out of bed basically**

**phil 08:17**

**wow someones living the life thatd be  
** **an extra two hours in bed for me :o**

> **dan 08:18**
> 
> **haha sucker**

> **dan 08:18**
> 
> **so did u have a gd time last night? i  
> ** **seem to remember the perfomance  
> ** **going well but i cant remember much  
> ** **after that**

**phil 08:20**

**haha yeah you’d ingested a serious  
** **amount of wine by the time i got to u!  
** **i had a good time, it was** **fun :) i’m  
glad its over now though it ** **was kind  
** **of exhausting**

> **dan 08:21**
> 
> **omg same - i hate meeting all the  
> ** **journalists bcs u have to concentrate  
> ** **so hard on being nice and polite and  
> ** **ugh. opening nights usually suck.**

**phil 08:22**

**usually?**

It took Phil a long time to muster up the courage to press SEND on that last text; it was borderline flirty, and he wasn’t sure how Dan was going to respond. He certainly wasn’t going to respond how Phil wanted him to respond anyway.

Forcing himself to put down the phone, he ignored the responding text tone and drained his cup of coffee. From there, he continued with his normal morning routine, finding suitable clothes and showering before power-walking out the door at quarter to nine, knowing he’d be a little late, but he could always blame the busses.

Once he’d exited the first bus, and hopped on the underground, he finally pulled his phone out, half-dreading what he might read.

> **dan 08:23**
> 
> **well yh i mean last night i was with  
>  ppl i actually liked, and they were  
> giving out free alcohol, so i wasn’t  
> exactly complaining haha**

Okay, he could handle this.

He tried not to lurch too much at the next stop, fashioning his face into an etching of boredom like everyone else, and tucked his feet under the seat a little.

**phil 09:11**

**haha yeah true, u certainly took  
advantage of the alcohol ;) im sat  
on the tube right now + the woman  
opposite me looks like a bear just  
ate her entire family 0_0**

> **dan 09:21**
> 
> **from the headache i’ve got, i hope  
> ** **i got at least 3 bottles of wine in  
> ** **else it’s 0% worth it  
> ** **i wonder how that went? 'hi it’s me  
> ** **debra my entire family just got  
> ** **ravished by bears, but i can still  
> ** **make it for the 10am meeting’**

**phil 09:22**

**“no i dont need time off, it’s not  
** **that traumatic… yes, i watched  
** **the mutilation… yes, they were  
** **the closest people to me in my  
** **life… am i sad? of course i am.  
** **but i won’t take that out on you.  
** **i’ll just glare at the man opposite  
** **me on the tube for a while. ok  
** **cool, see you in a bit. debra out.”**

> **dan 09:22**
> 
> **my fave thing abt that is that she  
> ** **ends her work calls with “debra  
> ** **out” like damn debra how cool**

**phil 09:23**

**haha obviously?? debra is the  
** **coolest ;) what did u do with ur  
** **extra hour out of bed then?**

**dan 09:24**

**not much - watched some friends  
** **episodes and waited for the meds  
** **to work basically haha**

This, however, was a lie. Whilst Dan had indeed started a Friends episode, he’d changed his mind halfway through and had gone down to the kitchen instead, where he’d had an interesting-turned-uncomfortable conversation with Josh.

Whilst the enquiries started off as pleasant and light-hearted, they’d turned sour after Dan asked about Josh’s liking of his co-stars. They were sat next to each other on the breakfast bar, Josh having already been up for an hour, polishing off yesterday’s article, and preparing for a visit to a charity event he had to report on in the middle of the day.

“Well, I liked Carrie.” Josh replied to Dan’s questioning, the words left unsaid practically forcing Dan to enquire further.

“Not Chris?”

“He’s an oversensitive prick.” Josh was calmly typing on his laptop, but Dan knew from almost 5 years experience as a 'Josh Companion’ that this was a front to a very emotionally temperamental underside. Dan was extremely reluctant to ask, but he knew that Josh would keep up this front until he did so.

“What was wrong with him?” In the hope of diffusing the tension a little, Dan flicked the kettle on and began to make himself an instant coffee, but having his back to him - coupled with the loud noise of the kettle - only made Josh louder.

“He was basically just a total fuckhead with me about the tiniest thing I said. It was really fucking stupid. Even Alicia agrees with me.”

Alicia will agree with anything you say as long as it shuts you up.

“What did you say?”

“What, to piss him off?” The kettle boiled, and his voice lowered a few decibels as a result, but the irritation was still itchingly present. “I only asked him what it was like to play a fag.”

Suddenly, Dan had the overwhelming urge to repeatedly smack his head into the cupboard in front of him.

“You asked what?” He ended up saying, pouring his water carefully and trying not to betray his shock and disappointment in his friend, praying that his acting roots would give him the strength to downplay his anger.

“What? I was asking him about his career - it was friendly.”

“No, it was homophobic.” Dan sat back at the breakfast bar, spooning in his two sugars and stirring it slowly, trying not to meet Josh’s eye, noticing that he’d stopped typing.

“I’m not homophobic,” Josh responded, automatically, the slight fear of the severe connotations behind this word creeping into his tone, “I don’t have a problem with gay people.”

“No, I know-” Dan was going to try and explain the whole model of 'homophobic isn’t a profile it’s a behaviour’, but in the end just settled for, “Using that word is homophobic though.”

“Pfft. No it’s not.” After this explanation, Josh clearly thought he was free of all charges, and went back to clicking on his computer, “It’s only offensive if you mean it to be offensive.”

Dan had to seriously bite his tongue to stop himself from unleashing a tirade of anger, and instead sat upon it quietly, letting it bubble underneath him, like tectonic plates on the turbulent lava. He didn’t even want the coffee in front of him, but he began to sip it resolutely, letting the burning of his tongue be a distraction from the anger.

“I don’t know if you’d say that if you had had the word seriously used against you.”

Dan was worried that Josh would have forgotten their topic of conversation, as he’d left it quite a while before responding, but the pausing in clicking and muttering indicated that he was, in fact, forcing Josh to think about this.

It was an innate feeling, and Dan felt it before he even looked at Josh; Josh wanted this to be explained to him, but he didn’t know how to ask.

“People get it screamed at them in the street.” Dan tried to keep his voice neutral, but he felt it somewhere within him that his final restraint was breaking, and this was probably going to be the end of it all, and there wasn’t much he could do to stop it. “Yelled in their face as they get beaten up, get thrown out of their own homes. It might seem harmless to you, but you’re not part of the minority it’s used against.”

Awkward silence suddenly settled upon them, and Dan decided he needed to leave now, before any questions were asked, and he knew that they would be. Josh was a reporter, and he had an extremely frustrating knack for asking the very question you absolutely, 100%, did not want to be asked.

“I better get going-” He began, starting to rise out of his seat and abandon his coffee, but Josh interrupted him before he could even finish the 'ing’.

“Dan, are you gay?”

There was a momentary quiet, but - just as Dan opened his mouth - he was cut off again.

“None of this wise-ass 'haha no I dated Annabelle, obviously’ crap.” He did a terrible, but weirdly accurate, impression of Dan, but his expression became deadly serious again, despite the jest, “Honestly, are you attracted to guys?”

There was a moment when Dan didn’t really know how to respond, but, in that, he felt like his silence kind of answered for him.

“You’re not going to make this weird, are you?” He joked, weakly, after he’d gathered his wits and secretly cursed Josh to hell for all eternity, trying to raise the mood of the room a little; the expression on the other man’s face was unreadable. Damn journalists.

“No, I-” Josh frowned, but shook his head a little, as if trying to dislodge a thought up there, “You’re like, totally gay?”

“Well, no.” Dan reluctantly sat himself back down in his seat, knowing that once the bastard began asking questions, he could hound you for fucking ages, and there was no use trying to escape. How else would he be working for The Times? “Probably fifty-fifty. Maybe more girls.”

“Right.” Josh hadn’t met his eye until this point, but the piercing stare was meeting Dan’s soft one with sudden curiosity, “So have you, like… _been_ with a guy before?”

Half of Dan wanted to laugh. The other half wanted to cry.

“This is really weird.” He stated, but the intensity of Josh’s stare was unmatched to any he’d seen before, and he tried to just accept his fate, “Uh, yeah, I guess I have. Y'know, here and there.”

“Who?”

“Josh!” Dan knew he was going to ask that question, but he still wasn’t prepared for it actually coming out of his mouth, and he started to stand up. “No, that’s too weird, this is too weird, I’m not just gonna sit here and-”

“Please.”

The slight vulnerability in that word really made Dan stop; Josh and he hadn’t been massively emotionally vulnerable with each other since he’d gotten with Alicia, and to be honest, that was fine with Dan. It was strange not having someone to talk to all the time, but he often talked to his brother anyway, and it wasn’t like he lost a major confidant. Except he kind of did.

“Why?” That was the main thing Dan didn’t understand; Josh had no reason to be interested in Dan’s sexuality or history, despite what he might normally say about it with girls. It was different with guys; Josh would act weirder. It was all too fucking weird, full stop.

“Because.” He replied, finally closing his laptop and pushing it away from him, a shred of guilt sneaking its way onto his face, despite the fact he tried to hide it, “I don’t know. It seems like such a massive part of your life-”

“It’s not massive-”

“-and I never knew about it. We never talked about it. So now, let’s talk about it.”

Honestly, Dan had no logical defense against that.

All he could do was sigh slightly, and pick up his coffee again, sipping the drink a little more in preparation for what was about to happen.

“What do you want to know?”

“Well, first of all, when did you know?”

Skin growing hotter, and a slight blush spreading across his cheeks, Dan remembered the memory with the accompaniment of a serious cringe, he tried to think of a way to downplay it, but couldn’t. Unfortunately, his teenage self was a bit of a train wreck.

“I, uh, was probably about fourteen. I was watching…y'know, and I realised that I wasn’t really looking at the girl, basically.”

“Oh.” Josh nodded, but he didn’t seem embarrassed, the questions clearly filling his brain faster than he could remember them, and they were tumbling over themselves too quick for him to feel embarrassed, “Who was the first guy you had a crush on?”

“Guy called Sam, but I was, like, 15, so I panicked and suppressed it as much as possible.”

“First guy you kissed?”

“Uh, I think his name was Dom? Or something like that, anyway. He directed the school play, and he was the most anal person I’ve ever met- pun not intended.”

“Dom and Dan.” Josh couldn’t suppress his smirk there, and Dan was relieved to smile back at him. Maybe this wouldn’t be so bad? “First guy you dated?”

“I never dated one, really.” He replied, simply, glad to not have to throw himself back into the trauma of his teenage years for one question, at least. “Next?”

“First guy you fucked?”

Whilst this was the next step in a logical series of questions, Dan knew that this was going to get really deep if he answered this. If he answered this question, there would be no limits between them anymore; they’d have access to all levels of each other again. Whilst it wasn’t exactly healthy, Dan realised that he was really craving it, and he didn’t think he needed anything else more, right now.

“Guy from Uni.”

“Who?”

Teetering on the edge of answering, all it took was for one look at Josh’s face for Dan to decide he kind of had to answer.

“Do you remember Raj? He was the guy from my Creative Writing module, who we hung out with in second term?”

“You fucked _Raj_? Or wait, did he fuck you?”

“I’m not going to-” Dan shook his head, ignoring Josh’s smirk, and trying to move past it, “But yeah, we, uh, were kind of a thing for a couple of months. It wasn’t serious though. He didn’t want that, and I don’t think I was ready to say anything anyway.”

“Oh my God.” This was probably the piece of information that was going to tip Josh over the edge, and he just sat there, blinking, for a few seconds, not really concentrating on anything in particular. “I wondered why he disappeared, I liked him. Fantastic at Beer Pong.”

Dan refrained from rolling his eyes, but he started to drink his coffee properly now, taking large mouthfuls and seeing the bottom of the mug.

“What’s the difference between guys and girls, y'know, during sex?”

Slowly, Dan tried thinking back to his experiences with Raj, not fixating on the way he would buck into Dan’s mouth and gasp as he got close to orgasm, knotting his fingers into Dan’s hair- no, definitely not that, but mainly on the differences between him and Annabelle.

“I guess,” He began, trying to weigh up all the aspects, “It was less awkward, for me, personally, with a guy, but there are loads of differences. Like- I dunno. With Annabelle, it was always kind of gentle and careful, like there were rules we had to follow, but with Raj it was-… Rougher.”

Sneaking another look at Josh’s facial expression, Dan was surprised to see the turmoil on Josh’s face.

“What’s wrong? Did I go too far?” Dan leaned forward to try and push himself into Josh’s line of sight, but Josh pulled back - almost flinching - and Dan felt a heavy weight settle in his stomach. He knew this wouldn’t have worked. He should have just kept his mouth shut.

A moment of silence passed before Dan looked at the clock on the wall; twenty past nine. He hated to leave things like this between them, but he didn’t really have a choice. And he knew he’d only fuck it up more if he stayed.

“I better go, it’s getting late.”

“I, uh- yeah.” Josh was trying to mask his emotions, but he wasn’t doing a very good job. He didn’t look angry exactly, but he definitely looked uncomfortable. “See you later, mate.”

Dan didn’t even bother washing his cup, instead moving away from the breakfast bar with haste and pulling his phone out of his pyjama trouser pocket, unlocking it and seeing another message from Phil, desperate to distract himself as he went upstairs.

There was a small flurry of conversation between the two, the texts getting a bit ridiculous - making up some stories about a woman named Debra - but Dan was trying to keep his mind off Josh as much as possible, and Phil was perfect at occupying.

A quick shower and he was out of the door, trying not to bump into people as he walked and texted, quickening to a light jog as he neared the tube station, knowing it left in 2 minutes, and he hadn’t checked his oyster card balance.

The conversation with Phil stopped throughout the tube journey because of bad signal, but resumed again once Dan appeared out the other side at seven minutes to ten, despite Phil being at work. During the brief underground gap, Dan had to throw himself into an intense game of Solitaire as a distraction, forcing him to appreciate how unbelievably grateful he was to Phil for distracting him, even if he didn’t know it. Dan finally got into the theatre at 9:59 and headed straight down to make up, where Phil said he’d be waiting.

As he headed into the room and caught Phil’s eye, his smile breaking his face and his pulse rising a little, he felt a buzzing in his hand, and the feeling of intense dread overcame him again as he realised ’ **JOSH** ’ was ringing him; an intense inner debate was had, but as he approached Phil, he shoved it back in his pocket, letting it go to voicemail and trying to squash a small voice in the back of his mind that said Josh just wanted to apologise.

“Hey, how’s it going?”

Dan was unbelievably relieved to hear Phil’s voice again, the voice of reason in his mad morning, and for a few hours - in the whirlwind of Phil and Chris and Carrie, costumes, lines and lights - everything was okay again.

-

**josh 12:17**

**hey man, you on your lunch break  
yet?**

Dan considered not replying when he picked his phone up again at five past one, but he knew it wouldn’t be fair, and he’d only have to deal with this sooner or later.

> **dan 13:04**
> 
> **just got off - sorry, i was in make up  
>  this morning so didn’t see your call  
> \- do you want to call now?**

**josh 13:04**

**actually i was wondering if you could  
come outside a minute?**

More dread. So much fucking dread. Icy, white hot, turbulent lakes of dread in his stomach.

> **dan 13:04**
> 
> **yeah sure, 2 mins**

As Dan moved towards the entrance, he quickly told Carrie where he was going, just in case anyone asked (probably Jack), and she let him go with only a worried glance and a nod. Whilst they weren’t the best of friends, Dan hadn’t exactly hidden his mood this morning, and they all knew it wasn’t just a hangover.

(And they all knew about the Chris vs Josh standoff)

(It somehow made everything worse)

Heading down the front steps of the building, Dan caught sight of Josh sat, texting, on a bench on the other side. Taking a deep breath, Dan moved towards him, crossing the road with minimal stress, sitting on the other end of the bench gingerly, unsure how to progress.

“Hey,” He ended up saying, softly, catching Josh’s attention and he instantly turned to Dan, panic in his eyes.

“Dan, oh fuck, I’m _so_ sorry about this morning, I didn’t think-”

“It’s fine.”

“No, it’s not fine, I was a total fucking arsehole, I shouldn’t have said anything like that, I just-” Josh paused for a moment, trying to collect his thoughts, whilst he pushed his hand through his hair, the busy London street still bustling around them, “Everything just kind of came together, and I realised what you were telling me. I don’t know. I think- I think I just needed some time, I guess.”

“Yeah, it must have been really hard for you.” Dan replied, sarcastically, before he realised that this was really not the time to be angry, and mumbled an apology.

“No, no, don’t be sorry.” Jack had a look in his eye that Dan couldn’t place. “I’m sorry. I just didn’t realise, y'know? I didn’t put two and two together.”

“Right.”

“I just- I am sorry. _So_ sorry. And I’ll apologise to Chris too, if it helps.”

“Uh, yeah,” This seemed a little out-of-the-blue, but it definitely wouldn’t harm matters, “That would probably be useful.”

“Okay.”

They were both quiet for a moment, letting people flow around them. It was the lunchtime rush in London, and whilst they weren’t in the center center, they were still pretty close, and people-watching was an easy task. Autumn was really setting in, and a breeze was making Dan quite chilly in his thin hoodie, but he didn’t want to leave Josh so soon; their conversation felt done, but at the same time totally inadequate.

“I really am okay with you and him, y'know.” Josh said, suddenly, and he turned to look at Dan again, his eyebrows raised, almost questioningly.

Dan’s mind shot straight to Phil; straight to his crinkled eyes and ebony hair, to his tongue sticking out when he laughed and his entrancing eyes.

“What?” All the times they’d interacted shot through Dan’s head and he had no idea how Josh had managed to piece it all together so fast, “How do you know about that?”

“It’s obvious,” Josh was smiling now, clearly pleased his reporting skills had paid off, but he laughed when he saw Dan’s expression, “I mean, everyone knows. You’d be blind not to see it.”

“Really?” Dan really hadn’t thought it was that obvious, but maybe he was too wrapped up to see it. “I didn’t even realise.”

“Oh c'mon! The tension on stage was almost unbearable. All the newspapers are talking about it.”

“Wait, what?” Dan snapped out of his confusion in an instant at the mention of the word 'stage’, his hand moving to cover his face a little in shock, “Oh my God, you think I’m with _Chris_? Are you _nuts_?”

For a moment, Josh was a deer caught in the headlights, but he quickly recovered.

“You _aren’t_? Fucking hell, either you two have some seriously unresolved tension, or you’re fucking incredible actors.”

“Well, I’d like to think it was the latter.” Dan snapped back, but it wasn’t really angry. He was sort of in shock; once he thought about it, there were probably a lot of things contributing to the idea that they were a thing, but the thought of being with Chris was just too weird. However, the fact that Phil sprung straight to mind was worrying; Dan remembered bits and pieces of last night, but he knew that over the course of the night they’d gotten flirtier and flirtier. He remembered the look in Phil’s eyes as he lifted his head and started to say his name, his fingers on Dan’s wrist and their legs pressed up against each other, the air around them feeling charged yet somehow void.

“Dan?” Josh waved a hand in front of Dan’s face, smirking a little when Dan finally jolted to attention, as is he knew what he was thinking about, “If Chris isn’t the guy, then who is it?”

“What guy?” Dan already knew he was fucked, but he thought he might be able to delay the process a little, trying not to think about the moment he felt Phil touch his skin for the first time, and how he felt the electricity on his fingertips.

“Don’t play dumb, you fucker.”

For a moment, he seriously considered playing the waiting game, but then he remembered who he was playing against, and gave in, with a sigh.

“Look, it’s not a thing, but it’s been kind of lowkey going on for about a week. That’s why I was so confused when you started talking about it.”

“Is he the guy you were texting this morning?” Josh, surprisingly, seemed pretty chill with this, but Dan knew that the cogs were turning in his brain faster than they appeared.

“Yeah.”

Silence settled upon them again, and Dan checked the time on his phone, wincing when he realised he probably wouldn’t have enough time to eat before they started Act 2. Which sucked, because he was starving.

“Do you need to head back in?”

“Yeah,” Dan stood up, watching Josh stand up too, and starting to turn towards the theatre, readying himself to cross the road, “See you later, dude.”

As he crossed and began to start up the steps again, waving to Josh before turning around to face them, he spotted Phil coming out of the door, and he seemed surprised to see him.

“How long have you been out here? Carrie said she thought you might be out here, but I didn’t really believe her. C'mon, Jack’s about to start Act 2- wait, have you eaten?” Phil rattled off in one breath, rummaging in his pockets when Dan shook his head.

“Christ, did you drink a Redbull or something?” Dan asked, as Phil wordlessly pushed a Twix into Dan’s hand, and led him through the theatre, “You seem a bit hyper.”

“I’m just thinking about the fact that I have to fix that-” Phil pointed to Dan’s face, “In a very short space of time.”

“At least you don’t have to repaint the wound?” Dan proposed, weakly, as Phil’s haste began to instil faint panic within him. “It could be worse.”

“Mm, I guess.”

They walked in quiet for a few moments, before Phil asked a question, sounding decidedly more calm, his stride having reduced a little in length and in its haste.

“Who was that you were talking to?”

“Uh, he’s just one of the guys I live with - Josh. He was around last night?”

“Don’t think I met him.”

Dan couldn’t quite tell where the iciness in Phil’s tone was coming from, until a tiny voice in the back of his mind whispered maybe he’s jealous? It was a tiny, tiny voice, but as Dan looked over Phil’s body language and demeanor, he had to hold back a smile, the voice getting louder and prouder. Holy shit.

“Yeah, I think he was around. Probably superglued to Alicia’s side? The cute Ethiopian girl with the hair?”

“Oh, I remember her-” Phil tilted his head on its side slightly as he walked, trying to drag his sodden memories out of a pool of alcohol, “Is she the one who works at the Tate? Talked about art a lot?”

“Oh, yep, that’s her.”

Dan hid his smile well, but he couldn’t help but let his arms swing a little and his step bounce a little more. Even if he was deluding himself about Phil, he’d just had a very positive conversation with Josh, and he was about to finish up a dress rehearsal in a play that was getting shining reviews, and he was doing something that he loved.

“Hey, you want to get something to eat after the rehearsal ends?”

Dan’s heart skipped a beat.

“What?” He replied, automatically, making it sound like he wasn’t listening, rather than he simply couldn’t believe that this was happening, his hands tucked inside his hoodie pockets.

“You need to get something to eat after rehearsals, else you might collapse on stage this evening. Louise and I were going to get some pizza later, you should come with us.”

“Oh, cool, sure.” He couldn’t help it; Dan’s heart sank a little at the mention of Louise. He liked her, sure, and he figured going out for a meal would be fun but… That wasn’t what he thought Phil meant.

Phil, on the other hand, was trying to recover from a fit of breathlessness. He and Dan were almost back at the room, and he’d just forced himself to ask if he wanted to go out with him for some food, but he’d panicked at Dan’s questioning. By now, quiet had settled back onto them, and Phil sensed that Dan knew what he had meant the first time.

It was just like at the party; Dan had seemed totally fine with the direction they’d been heading in, but had then seemed unbelievably relieved when the other guy - Josh? - interrupted them. Maybe Dan just didn’t want to make things uncomfortable by rejecting Phil outright?

This was the first time in almost a year when Phil had met a guy that he actually liked, but if it wasn’t returned then maybe he should back off. Yeah, probably a good idea.

It just made things a whole lot harder when Phil had his fingers all over Dan’s face and his body inside his personal bubble for extended periods, but this was his job. He was paid to be professional, and fucking one of the actors was certainly not professional, even if he couldn’t stop thinking about it. Over and over. In, like, 20 different positions.

_Ah, shit._

–

Pizza Hut was loud. Not the kind of loud a coffee shop was, where you can kind of tune it out after a while, and the clinks of mugs becomes quite relaxing as you chat away to the person opposite you - no, this was the kind of loud that got right into your eardrums, threatening to pierce them every time a child screamed in the midst of their temper tantrum. However, the Pizza Hut was near to the theatre, and it was cheap, so it wasn’t their fault they had to go in the 'Happy Hour’ before the show started.

As the three of them sat down around the table, Louise whipped out her phone and shot off a quick text, before launching into a story surrounding the location of Phil’s flat.

“I mean, have you been there yet, Dan?” She acknowledged the shake of his head, “Oh, you’re in for a treat. The living room has literally one window and it feels like a prison cell.”

“Hey, I decorated to improve it!” Phil protested, fiddling with his nail polish and chipping chunks off. He’d repainted them this morning, so now they were a lime green - or, they were, before he peeled bits off. “At least my flat doesn’t look like Pinterest threw up on it.”

“Just because I like things to look nice!” Louise shot back, but she was grinning, and they’d clearly had this argument a million times before. “Honestly, your argument must be pretty weak if all you have to fight back with is 'your flat looks too nice and home-y’.”

“'Nice and home-y’ aka candle and glitter central.” Phil said, shooting Dan a look that suddenly made him think that Phil may have been forced to participate in the making of said glittery objects.

“Everything’s better with a sprinkle of glitter.” Louise fought back, but she was clearly losing interest in the conversation, and Phil took this moment to announce that he was heading to the loo, pushing back on his chair and cringing at the harsh screech it made. As he left - and Dan tried not to stare at his arse - Louise turned to Dan full-on, and leant forward on her elbow, making Dan to feel more than a little intimidated.

“Er, hi?”

“So, Dan,” She began, sensing his discomfort and choosing to ignore it, “Tell me your life story.”

“My life story? It’s pretty boring actually-”

But they were both interrupted by a soft buzz, indicating that Phil had received a text, from where he’d left his phone on the table (quite stupidly). Louise leant over, as per usual, to see what the text said, before bolting upright and grabbing the phone, her face paling a little under her make-up as she tried to look casual.

“Everything okay, Louise?” Dan asked, a little nervously, unsure whether to push the subject further or try to see the phone screen.

“Uh, yeah-” Louise stuttered out, before slowly putting the phone back down, clearly a bit unsure but not wanting to ruin the evening, “I just wasn’t expecting a text from… That person, is all.”

“Who is it?” Dan asked, before he could help himself, but he figured that if they were both snooping on Phil’s phone then they were probably in this together.

“Phil’s ex.” Louise replied, honestly, “He’s a total bastard. His name contains three devil emojis, two angry faces, and two red crosses.”

She seemed to be babbling a little bit, so Dan decided to steer the conversation back, unsure if he wanted to know about Phil’s ex, if they were so bad that they had that string of emojis, and made Louise turn that shade of white. He shrugged his shoulders, drawing Louise’s eye to him from the physical movement, and continued what he was saying before.

“Anyway, are you ready for my tragic life story?” He joked, and she seemed relieved of a distraction, but Dan had barely finished his high school years before Phil was back, and he had no idea what was going to happen next.

When Phil did sit down, he smiled at them both, asking what he’d missed before clicking his centre button on his phone, and frowning at the screen as he read the text. One look at Louise’s face told him that she had read the text, but she wasn’t going to give him hell in the middle of Pizza Hut. However, she certainly looked like she was going to give him the extra special version of hell later, with several versions of 'what the fuck are you doing?’ and maybe a few rounds of 'Phillip Michael Lester I’m going to kill you’.

Whilst the conversation restarted, it was stilted, up until a really irritating man came to serve them, sliding himself in at the spare seat next to Dan, chatting to them happily and 'memorising’ their order without writing it down. He immediately set them on edge, and it formed a bond between them again, encouraging conversation as they talked about the cringey experience, before moving onto lighter topics.

“Did you hear Hazel got offered a photoshoot?” Louise was tapping at her phone every few minutes, presumably keeping up her correspondence, “In a London women’s magazine. They love that she wrote the script, and they want to interview her and everything.”

“Wow, that’s so cool!” Phil grinned - they all loved Hazel, and she deserved all of the good things. “It’s so weird that, like, people are actually getting things out of the production. Haven’t you got something on next week, Dan?”

“Well, Josh wrangled me an interview with the theatre person at the Times, but I don’t think they were all too happy about doing it.”

“Still!” Phil seemed to have forgotten all about the text, and was swinging his legs a little, his shoulders slack with relaxation. “It’s so exciting that people are moving onto cool things.”

“Are you up to anything?” Dan asked, not really expecting Phil to say yes, but he was surprised when Phil didn’t answer straight away, his cheeks a little pink.

“It’s not really anything _big_ -”

“What is it?” Dan was instantly excited for Phil; the make up artist trade was full of self-taught artists from Youtube, like Phil, and it was hard to get a foot in the door. Even if it was a stage-hand job, it was still pretty good.

“Well, it’s a job interview. For another musical.” He looked embarrassed, like he regretted opening his mouth, “It’s not even official, just a chat really, and I don’t even think I’ll get it.”

“Which musical?”

“It’s just a stage hand job!” Phil reinforced, before realising he wasn’t going to escape the clutches of Dan and Louise on this front, and sighed, “Fine, it’s for Les Mis.”

“Holy fucking shit!” Louise exclaimed, causing several pissed-off parents to look her way in disdain. She apologised to them instantly, but turned back to Phil pretty quick. “Les Mis? As in, the one true musical to end all musicals?”

“Uh, yes, but-”

“No 'buts’, oh my God, Phil-”

“It’s just because Carrie knows someone there. She wants to audition in the Spring, and so she got in contact with some people. She just told me they were also looking for a few new stagehands, and that she’d got me a meeting with one of them.” Phil looked almost defensive in his explanation, as if he was defending why he wasn’t good enough for them.

“That’s still good!” Louise encouraged, but she had clearly toned down the excitement, perhaps sensing Phil’s nerves, “You can do that.”

“Yeah. Well, I hope so, anyway.” Phil managed to laugh it off and move on, suddenly interrupted by the arrival of their food.

Unfortunately, it wasn’t quite what they ordered.

They at least had the decency to wait until the guy had left before complaining about it.

“I’m sure I ordered the Pepperoni?” Dan prodded his pizza a little, as if to check that it was actually what he thought it was, but shrugged, “At least it’s not far off. Guys?”

“Well,” Louise sighed, “I guess mine’s close enough as well.”

“I bet this was 'cause he didn’t write our orders down.” Phil ripped off the first slice of his pizza off, noting that the deep pan he ordered had miraculously turned into a thin crust. “Let’s not complain though. Don’t think I can wait any longer for more food.”

“True, true.” Dan laughed a little, and then pushed his chair back a little, “I’m just gonna go wash my hands before we start.”

A moment of silence passed before Phil realised why Dan had left them. When he looked up to meet Louise’s eye, fearfully, he knew that she was thinking the same thing, but before she said anything, she just sighed.

“I’m not gonna 'tell you off’, you don’t need to look so scared.” She ripped a bit of crust off her pizza with her fingers, clearly throwing all her manners out of the window, because - well - this was Pizza Hut. “I just don’t understand why you would still talk to that guy after what he did to you.”

She was clearly watching him out of the corner of her eye to gauge his reaction, but she was keeping up the air of 'casual’.

“We’ve barely even been talking.” Phil muttered out, starting on his pizza as well, unable to help the interrogated feeling he had. “I don’t even know how it started.”

Almost half a minute passed in screaming silence; the child behind them had decided they wanted pudding and that they were going to have a tantrum until they got it. Phil knew how the kid felt. Suddenly, Phil felt Louise’s hand on his, stopping him from nervously twisting his glass, and he forced himself to meet her eyes.

“Just don’t let yourself get back into that situation, you hear me?” Louise said, her voice low and steady, her gaze firm against his skin,“I don’t want to have to do what I did last time.”

“I don’t want you to, either.” Phil twisted his hand so that they were palm-to-palm, and squeezed her hand gently, trying not to think about 'last time’ too much. Out of the corner of his eye, he saw Dan emerge from the door leading downstairs, holding it open for a mother and child heading in the opposite direction because he was just too much of a fucking gentleman, his dimple-y smile charming the mother in an instant. “It really was a one time thing. Never again.”

“Okay.” She removed her hand, and focused back on her pizza. “I trust you, Phil.”

It was obvious that Dan knew what they’d talked about whilst he had gone, but he pushed the conversation on pleasantly, allowing the corner of his eye to ignore the way Phil slid his phone back into his pocket, his expression still a little unsettled, but not letting his mind forget it.

That was a set of questions for another day.

—

**phil 09:36**

**hey, you up to anything today? :)**

> **dan 09:42**
> 
> **not really, why? :)**

**phil 09:44**

**wanna hang out?? maybe go for a  
** **coffee or let me thrash you at video  
** **games??**

> **dan 09:46**
> 
> **it’s cute that u think u could beat me  
> ** **but im afraid ur very wrong. i’ll meet  
> ** **u in the starbucks by the theatre and  
> ** **then it’s game on. 11:30am. b there  
> ** **or b [  ]**

**phil 09:47**

**be there or be open bracket 2 spaces  
** **closing bracket?**

> **dan 09:48**
> 
> **u know its a square quit being a smartass**

**phil 09:48**

**:)**

–

It was 11:34, and Dan was not in the least bit surprised that Phil was late.

In truth, he was actually sort of nervous; sure they’d gone to get food on their lunch breaks before, and he’d had that meal with him and Louise, but they hadn’t hung out on their own for an extended period of time yet. Whilst Dan didn’t think it was going to go badly, he’d definitely stored up some conversation starters to use just in case. Because he was _that_ much of a fucking nerd.

Just as Dan was about to check his phone again, Phil appeared around the corner, also looking down at his phone, but grinning when he looked up and saw Dan’s exasperated expression.

“What?” He asked, as he approached. “I bet you only got here a minute ago.”

“I got here at 11:29, and was therefore _early_ , I’ll have you know.” Dan replied, fake-offended, before grinning and turning towards the Starbucks door, finally allowing himself inside. “Thank God you finally got here, I think my balls were about to freeze off.”

“Yeah, apparently it’s only four degrees today.” Phil replied, absentmindedly, “Not much longer till it’ll snow.”

“It better not fucking snow.” Dan mumbled, midway through removing his scarf and allowing himself to relax in the general hubbub of the Starbucks, packed with early-November shoppers in desperate need of a caffeine boost. “I don’t have the energy to deal with the snow as well as the show. After the show finishes, it can snow all it likes.”

They moved through the queue slowly but their conversation was generally upbeat and unwavering, although it quietened after they ordered, and had to half-yell to be able to hear each other. As a result, they waited in companionable silence, and Dan was just accepting his Caramel Macchiato and waiting for Phil to get his as he heard Phil say something above the noise.

“Hey, do you know those girls in the corner?” He asked Dan, his eyes indicating to their left, and when Dan turned to look, Phil was surprised at the negative expression that unfolded.

“Yes.” Dan didn’t elaborate,“Do you think they’ve seen us?”

“Er,” Phil tried to take a sneaky look, but one of the girls just waved at him. “Yes.”

“Shit.”

Phil’s drink was almost finished being made - they could see it over the counter - and Dan was certain that as soon as they were sat down, the girls were going to come and 'find’ them.

“Are there any seats around the corner that we could sit in?” Dan asked, resisting the obvious urge to look behind him again.

“Uh, probably. We can head round and see.” Phil paused to accept his drink from the Barista, and together they dodged through tables and wound around people, “Who are they anyway?”

Although Dan was anticipating this question, he still wasn’t ready for having to give the response.

“They’re- uh,” He swallowed, pointing out a table in the corner, “Over there- well, they sort of made this gang…”

He waited again until they were sat down, relieving themselves of bags and coats, before he started again.

“They sort of… Run accounts. On Twitter.”

It took a few moments for Phil’s eyes to light up in the way that Dan knew they would, and he suddenly wanted to laugh, seeing the funny side for the first time in about a year, rather than the weird side.

“You mean,” Phil was grinning now, knowing exactly what Dan meant, but wanting to drag it out anyway, “Fan accounts? Of you?”

“Yes.” Dan tried his best to look humble, but his smile was saying otherwise, “Trust me, I’ve heard all the jokes, don’t try it.”

“So, that’s like your fan club.” It wasn’t a question, but Dan nodded in reply anyway, finally taking a sip of his drink, then dipping his finger in the caramel topping. He was startled by the look in Phil’s eye when he looked back up again, “We could totally mess with them.”

“What?”

“Y'know, like, when they come over, drop hints about things that are totally untrue.” Phil looked extremely excited by this, even though Dan was sure he wasn’t a naturally mischievous person, “Like, I don’t know, you’re about to audition to join One Direction after the break next year, or you’ve recently got a pet snake named Jonathan or something.”

“A pet snake called Jonathan? What kind of shit ass rumour is that?” Dan couldn’t help but get spun into this web, “Nah, not that one. We’ll do the One Direction one, and-”

“Hey, sorry to interrupt, but are you Dan Howell?” A female voice asked him, and Phil’s eyes travelled upwards from Dan’s face, indicating that this voice was behind him.

Slowly, Dan spun around, acting as innocent as possible, as if he didn’t know exactly who she was.

“Yes?”

“Hi, my name’s Becca,” She was a short brunette with soft brown eyes and a shy smile, “This is kind of sad, but I’m a really big fan, and I was just wondering if I could get a selfie?”

“Sure.” Dan smiled back, and leant back for a selfie, smiling his half-smile and allowing his dimple to shine through, and then turning to talk to her, “How did you know I’d be here?”

“Well, we just figured, since this was the Starbucks nearest the theatre…” She looked a little sheepish, but she seemed like a nice person, and Phil decided he really quite liked her freckles. “It sounds a bit stalker-y now.”

She laughed a little, but she was clearly nervous.

“I guess I’m a creature of habit.” He said, grinning back, sensing her nerves and trying to dissipate them. “Are you danhowell with three L’s on Twitter?”

“Uh, yeah.” She looked surprised, but quite pleased, fiddling with the sleeves of her jumper. “God, you don’t follow me, do you?”

“Nah, but I recognise your icon - the cat on the surfboard, right?” Dan grinned, and laughed when she blushed a bit, clearly not worried at all by this development, until he saw a few more girls turn the corner, and he visibly held in a sigh. “And the rest of the gang?”

“Oh, yeah, sorry.” She sensed his apprehension, “Do you want us to-”

“No, no, it’s fine, I don’t mind.” He switched his smile back on, and she relaxed a little, turning to receive her friends.

Whilst they went through all the pleasantries and the selfies, Phil decided to get his phone out, wondering when he was going to get the chance to drop his 'one direction’ bomb, before Dan’s phone pinged before him, and Phil saw the opportunity.

Reaching over, he picked up the phone to see a text from Josh, and the way it was worded inspired him to say something totally different, and possibly downright cruel.

“Hey, Dan-” Phil tried to look excited, looking down at the phone screen and back up at Dan, “Your agent got you that audition for that porn film!”

It took every bone in Phil’s body to keep a straight face at Dan’s expression, and he didn’t dare look at the girls, until he felt he really had to. The sudden quiet was excruciating.

“Oh, um, sorry-” Phil tried to backtrack, fumbling with the phone and putting it down again, using this as an excuse to not meet their eyes, “I shouldn’t have- sorry.”

The burning gazes of six teenagers - and Dan - was too much for Phil, and he excused himself to go to the toilet, hoping the situation would be resolved by the time he got back.

As soon as he got into the toilets, he couldn’t suppress his laughter anymore, but thankfully it was a one person cubicle, so he could stay as long as he liked really, without weirding anyone out. He took out his phone and sent Dan a text.

**phil 12:01**

**sorry???**

There was no response for several minutes, until-

> **dan 12:05**
> 
> **you aren’t forgiven. get out  
> ** **here u loon they’re gone**

Reluctantly, Phil left the toilet, winding back through to the table again and taking a seat opposite Dan, trying to keep his face straight, but losing it again at the sight of Dan’s expression, his snorts and giggles escaping relentlessly. Before Phil could react, Dan punched Phil on the arm - not particularly hard, because he was weak as hell - but enough for it to hurt, and for Phil to stop laughing quite so enthusiastically.

“You should have seen your face.” He managed to get out through his laughter, relieved to see a small smile on Dan’s face.

“What happened to One Direction?” Dan asked back, taking a sip of his drink, although he was amused, “That was what I was prepared for, not being in a porn film.”

“Well, I just read that text you got from Josh - by the way, he’s pissed you didn’t wash your dishes this morning - and it inspired me.” He began to drink his drink as well, grinning as Dan checked his phone and rolled his eyes at Josh’s text, “One Direction didn’t seem nearly as exciting after that. How did you get them all to leave?”

“Well, they all left pretty sharpish after your statement.” He shrugged, “I think I’ll be getting some interesting tweets tonight.”

Phil tried to move on, but he simply burst into giggles once more, and Dan couldn’t help but follow, both of them descending into a solid few minutes of laughing and desperate gulps of air. After they both managed to calm themselves down, Phil wiping tears from his eyes, they looked at each other again, grinning madly.

_Yeah_ , Dan thought, _I really had nothing to worry about._

-

“You _bastard_!” Phil yelled, as Dan blue-shelled him for the second time in the space of a minute, and groaned as Dan overtook him at the last minute and finished 1st for the fourth race in a row. “I hate this game.“

"Tut tut, language.” Dan smirked, totally relaxed as they sat through the mini celebration at the end of Mario Kart. “Honestly, Phillip, you have a filthy mouth.”

“Oh, sod off.” Phil groaned again, good-naturedly, before standing up, “You want a drink? I think I’m gonna grab a coke.”

“Sounds good.” Dan replied, not following Phil because the flat was so small they could talk through the walls. As he could hear Phil clinking glasses in the kitchen, he stood up to snoop around in Phil’s cupboards, feeling very little shame in the act. As he opened the first cupboard, he found an entire tub of nail varnishes, mainly dominated by blue, many different shades appearing throughout the tub. Just as he was about to run his hands through them, Phil came back in, and rolled his eyes at Dan.

“Want me to paint your nails for you?” He half-joked, handing Dan a coke, and sitting back down on the sofa.

“Have you got a black?” Dan asked, surprisingly serious, “Aha! You do. Careful, after a couple of shots, I’d be begging you to do it.”

“Should we skip the shots and do it now?” Phil replied, checking his own nail polish, which was a chipped light blue at that moment, “I could do you, and you could do me.”

“I’ll definitely need a few drinks before that happens,” Dan laughed, moving to sit back down on the sofa, “And it’s only 4pm, so hold your horses.”

“'Hold your horses’? Alright, Grandpa.” The teasing was so easy that Dan revelled in it, Phil’s calm voice soothing to his ears. “Okay, shall we try 'mirror’? Because you’ve killed me on every level so far, but mirror might just fuck you up a little.”

“Go ahead.” Dan tried not to look too smug, but he already knew he was going to win, “I’ll still kick your arse.”

-

> **dan 01:49**
> 
> **did u watch the new ep of game  
>  of thrones im dying**

**phil 01:50**

**YES HOLY SHIT**

**phil 01:50**

**I DIED AT CERSEI LIKE OH MY  
** **GOD I FEEL SO BAD FOR HER**

> **dan 01:51**
> 
> **SAME OH GOD**
> 
> **dan 01:52**
> 
> **wait what are u doing up at 2am**

**phil 01:52**

**…buffy marathon got a bit out of  
** **hand…….you???**

> **dan 01:53**
> 
> **existential crisis and obvs game  
> ** **of thrones haha**

**phil 01:53**

**what kind?**

> **dan 01:54**
> 
> **idk. doubting our entire existences  
> ** **\- why we matter… what the point of  
> ** **life is… whether it’s worth buying a  
> ** **venti starbucks frappuccino…**

**phil 01:57**

**a. we matter bcs we have feelings  
** **b. point of life is to do whatever  
** **makes u happy  
** **c. it’s always worth buying a venti  
** **starbucks frappuccino**

> **dan 01:57**
> 
> **god bless u**
> 
> **dan 01:57**
> 
> **tbf i kind of already knew abt the  
> ** **starbucks thing**

**phil 01:58**

**do u want to call??**

> **dan 01:58**
> 
> **nah it’s fine haha i’m just up too late**

**phil 01:59**

**well u can talk to me abt it if u want i  
** **rlly dont mind it isn’t like im going to  
** **bed anytime soon haha**

> **dan 02:01**
> 
> **thank u but srsly im fine :)**

**phil 02:01**

**well any other time is fine too - i’m  
** **never too busy to text x**

> **dan 02:02**
> 
> **haha watch out i might take you up  
> ** **on that**

**phil 02:03**

**i would hope so :) now, how did u feel  
** **abt the way they handled arya in that  
** **episode?? she seemed really ooc to me**

-

“Hey, how much have we had?” Dan asked, suddenly, when he took a look at the time and the number of empty glasses on the table, but Phil was texting, and didn’t respond.

They were sat in a pub in Hackney, one of the apparently up-and-coming areas of London, surrounded by a sea of empty glasses, having been sat at a table in the corner for several hours. Together, they’d drunk their way through God knows how many drinks, and were both now on the very comfortable side of tipsy.

“We’ve had a few.” Phil said, finally, coming back to the real world, and putting his phone down on the table, leaning forward, “A good amount of few.”

“Obviously a good amount of few, else we wouldn’t feel good.” Dan stumbled his way through those words, but Phil understood them anyway.

“You know what I haven’t done in bloody ages?” Phil asked Dan, suddenly and rhetorically, the alcohol level settling at a happy place, “Gone to the park.”

“Like, the swings?” Dan thought about it, but he couldn’t remember the last time he went either, “God, same. Shall we go?”

“What, now?” Phil look slightly alarmed, but not totally against the idea, “Do you know around here well?”

“No, not really, but I have Google Maps.” Pulling his phone out of his pocket, Dan found a nearby park in less than twenty seconds, “There’s a big stretch of grass a couple of minutes away, there’s probably one there, shall we go?”

“Are you serious?” A small grin spread over Phil’s face, “Er, yeah, okay. Let’s go!”

They both stood, wrapping themselves within many layers of clothing, and pushed themselves out into the biting chill of the October air, their eyes shining and their lips reddening with the cold. Following the instructions on the screen, unable to confidently follow the route without it, they wound through streets, watching their breath hover before them, and finally finding it.

“Well, it’s not much of a park, but at least it has the swings!” Phil said, optimistically, running and jumping onto the creaky swing set with gusto, and only wincing a little when the chains sagged to take his weight, “God, was my butt always this fat?”

Whilst the park did indeed have a set of run down swings, it also had a rusty slide and a roundabout, the days of which were definitely numbered. The stretch of grass itself was quite pleasant, but it was clear that this park was very rarely used, and no-one cared enough to rebuild or get rid of it.

“I’m sure your butt isn’t that fat.” Dan said, before sitting down on the swings himself, and noting the undeniable smallness of the swing, and the largeness of his backside. “Holy shit, are these swings made for pixies or something?”

“Nah, just small children.” Phil replied, sighing a little, but not losing his positive attitude, “At least it forces us to remember we’re not kids anymore.”

“Deep.” Dan joked, but Phil didn’t laugh, and - when Dan turned to look at him - he was staring off into the distance absent-mindedly, and Dan figured he’d best not disturb him.

Quiet settled upon the pair in the darkness, the moonlight surprisingly bright, and the green stretch of 'park’ laid out in front of them. The light pollution was strong enough that you could barely see the stars, but they were still there, burning bright beneath the foggy layer, and twinkling gently. Moments like these reminded Dan of why he liked nighttime so much; no-one was expecting anything of you, and it was incredibly freeing.

“What’s your biggest regret?” Phil asked, suddenly, and when Dan turned his head, he was surprised to see him staring intensely.

Instantly, Raj flashed through Dan’s mind, and all the pain that came after they ended. It was only after the ordeal finished that Dan realised that it wasn’t a fuckbuddy relationship; it was a real relationship, but it was just hidden. The hardest thing he ever did was get over it, whilst no-one, except Raj, knew a thing.

“I-I don’t know.” Dan knew his voice was unconvincing, but he didn’t think Phil would try and push it.

“Don’t bullshit me.” Phil replied, surprising Dan in the fact that he did, in fact, push it. His eyes were pale in the moonlight, and intense, and all Dan wanted to do was melt into them. “What’s your biggest regret?”

There was a small pause where Dan tried to tie his tongue around the words.

“Being a stupid teenager.” He said, eventually, rocking gently on his swing and hearing it squeak quietly, the sound of the wind calming him down a little, “Thinking I could handle things when I couldn’t.”

“Quit being vague.” Phil muttered back, the alcohol making him more confident, and the darkness murmuring its quiet encouragement, “That’s not what I asked.”

Finally, Dan forced himself to look up at Phil again, a small, and slightly sad, smile on his face.

“There was a guy at Uni, who was a good friend of mine. We were together, for a while, except we didn’t tell anyone. I thought it was just a bit of fun, but then it ended and- well, it sucked. And I never did anything about it.” He sighed, and looked up at the foggy sky, “God, I was so fucking miserable. I should have said something.”

“At least you didn’t kill anyone?” Phil offered, managing to get a smile out of Dan, but still regretting pushing the question. “It could have been a lot worse.”

“Yeah, I guess.” Dan let himself swing a little, having far too much leg to be that close to the ground, but trying anyway, “So what’s your biggest regret then? Did you kill someone?”

“Haha, yeah, obviously. Trying to take out the competition.” Phil deadpanned, before shaking his head. “Nah, I regret letting other people influencing my decisions. There was an offer I got, around Uni time, to go and do some work in London, at a theatre, but the idea of me doing something that wasn’t Uni scared my parents shitless, because they thought it wouldn’t be stable work. I’m sure they would have supported me if I had done it, but I felt that getting a degree for 'back up’ would have made them happier. I think it did, but it was harder for me to get back into theatre after that. My friends didn’t really help either, but it wasn’t their fault. At least we both still ended up here, hey?”

“Yeah.” Dan mused, “I’d probably have stayed in school for Raj.”

“You dropped out?” Phil seemed surprised, after giving himself a moment to understand Dan’s statement, “I didn’t realise you did that.”

“It’s not something I particularly like to share.”

“What did you study again - English?”

“Yeah, English Lit.” He couldn’t help but let a small smile sneak onto his face, “I thought I’d like it. Liked the subject at A Level, but turns out it wasn’t really my sort of thing.”

“Ah, I did English Language. Fat lot of good it did me.” Phil swung himself a little more, his expression cheering a little from the previous conversation even though the cold was starting to set in. “What the hell would I be able to do with that? At least English Lit makes you kinda cultured.”

“Mm, 'cultured’, ha.” Dan grinned, getting back into the tipsy spirit and allowing himself to relax a little again. He’d found that Phil often sprung serious questions upon people in the middle of a regular conversation, and - whilst it often had a dramatic effect on the mood and it set Dan on edge a little - it was highly entertaining and he sort of loved it.

“Well, more cultured than being able to recite phonetics.” Phil grinned back, “Honestly, I wish we’d at least read some Shakespeare or something. Much better use of our time.”

“You wouldn’t say that if you spent two years reading Shakespeare.”

They both laughed, and let the conversation run on, letting the pull of the words wash back and forth onto the shore of their friendship. It settled in the night, the rhythm of the talking becoming soothing and relaxing, the drunk truths and sober lies working their way into the forefront of their friendship; for the first time in a long time, they both felt like they’d found something real.

–

**phil 22:10**

**awite awite awite u wanna go  
** **to the cinema tomorrow**

> **dan 22:16**
> 
> **ah im busy tomorrow in the day  
> ** **can we go in the eve? or weds?**

**phil 22:17**

**sure what ya up to tomorrow**

> **dan 22:17**
> 
> **family lunch then photoshoot  
> ** **in the afternoon bcs im obvs  
> ** **famous af now**

**phil 22:18**

**YOU JOKE BUT I GOT STOPPED  
** **BY ONE OF YOUR GALS THE  
** **OTHER DAY**

**phil 22:18**

**IT WAS ABOUT THE PORN  
** **FILM IT WAS SO HORRIFICALLY  
** **AWKWARD**

> **dan 22:19**
> 
> **HAHA OMG IM SO SORRY**

**phil 22:20**

**YOU SHOULD BE THEY WERE  
** **ASKING IF THEY COULD SEE  
** **IT IN CINEMAS I DIED**

> **dan 22:21**
> 
> **hang on i’ll tweet abt it now  
> ** **lmao that should stop it**

**phil 22:21**

**how have you only just thought  
** **about tweeting about it honestly**

> **dan 22:22**
> 
> **alright snarky put the sass away**
> 
> **dan 22:24**
> 
> **kk ive tweeted it - what movie u  
> ** **wanna see tomorrow eve then??**

**phil 22:25**

**i wanna go see the scorch trials  
** **but no one’ll come with ???  
** **there’s a showing at 8!!!**

> **dan 22:26**
> 
> **i’ll do anything that involves  
> ** **staring at dylan o'brien tbh i’m  
> ** **in - what cinema??**

**phil 22;27**

**covent garden if that’s cool  
** **with you - shall i see you  
** **there at like ten to ?**

**phil 22:27**

**also i agree x10 to the dylan  
** **o'brien thing that’s half the  
** **reason i want to see it**

> **dan 22:28**
> 
> **yh that’s fine - tbh tho dylan  
> ** **is hot af but have u sEEN  
> ** **evan peters**

**phil 22:28**

**u mean the ahs guy?? u have  
** **such good taste he is like an  
** **angel amongst men**

> **dan 22:29**
> 
> **his cheekbones alone make me  
> ** **want to set myself on fire he  
> ** **honestly turns me into the heart  
> ** **eyes emoji**

> **dan 22:29**
> 
> **he followed me on twitter the  
> ** **other day i almost screamed**

**phil 22:30**

**…does that mean he’s seen the  
** **porn tweet ??**

> **dan 22:31**
> 
> **OH MY GOD ????????? SHIT**
> 
> **dan 22:31**
> 
> **IM GONNA KILL YOU THIS IS  
> ** **ALL UR FAULT YOU STARTED  
> ** **THIS RUMOUR U JUST RUINED  
> ** **MY CHANCES W/ EVAN PETERS**

**phil 22:32**

**yeah. sure. that was the only thing  
** **stopping you.**

> **dan 22:32**
> 
> **NOW WE WILL NEVER LIVE IN THE  
> ** **SOUTH OF FRANCE WITH OUR  
> ** **THREE BEAUTIFUL BILINGUAL  
> ** **CHILDREN AND A DOG PHIL HOW  
> ** **COULD U DO THIS TO ME**
> 
> **dan 22:33**
> 
> **i hate you.**

-

“Two tickets to Scorch Trails, please.”

Every bone in Dan’s body was screaming that this felt like a date, but he knew he couldn’t let himself think like that; they were friends, and that was all he could allow.

“That’ll be £19.40.”

At the next till, Phil was getting them snacks, ordering a popcorn to share and some Cokes, flicking out a tenner and some coins. This was the deal they’d made, and it just about evened out price-wise, but Phil still felt a little guilty letting Dan pay for the slightly more expensive thing.

“Screen 2, hope you enjoy.” The assistant smiled, woodenly, and Dan accepted the tickets semi-gracefully, moving towards Phil and taking his drink to allow him to carry things a little better. As they began to move towards the signposted doorway, they paused at a small table to balance their things on it and put their change from the transactions away.

As they collected themselves, Dan heard a familiar voice chattering away behind him, and turned around in surprise.

“Daniel?” A short, elderly woman - dressed in a dark green coat and cream trousers - asked as their eyes met, the shock and pleased expressions merging, moving towards them from a few meters away, “I didn’t know you were going to be here!”

“Hey, Grandma- sorry, this was the thing I had on this evening!” Dan said, moving to hug her, a little awkwardly because of their size difference, but it wasn’t uncomfortable. “This is Phil-”

He moved back and introduced Phil, who was still low-key wrestling with the popcorn box, which was slippery and refusing to be put down lightly. However, he managed a smile as he deposited the box onto the table, finally, and stretched out his hand to shake. The elderly woman had kind eyes, and a good handshake; Phil instantly liked her.

She waved the few people she was with onwards to the screen her movie was being shown in, although Dan didn’t particularly recognise any of them, as he introduced his grandma to Phil as “Helen”.  
  
“So, is this your boyfriend then, Daniel?” Her eyes sparkled a little, after the introductions had finished, and Phil’s previous appreciation withdrew a little. “You’ve been keeping him firmly tucked away.”  
  
“No-, no.” Dan spluttered out, accompanying a weird and unconvincing laugh, not seeming either calm or collected, “Phil’s just a friend.”  
  
Phil awkwardly smiled at her, confirming Dan’s statement, but he decided to refrain from meeting Dan’s eye just yet. He knew they’d laugh about it later, but that rested on not breaching that territory just yet, and letting the scene play out instead of embarrassing themselves further.

  
“Oh, I see.” She apologised, but the look in her eye didn’t fade, and Phil knew that she could sense something in both of them, even though she didn’t push it, “How was your interview then, dear?”  
  
“Uh, it was really good, thanks.” Dan replied, relieved to be back in safe territory, “They put a whole load of gel stuff in my hair which I couldn’t quite get out, but apart from that, I felt it went well. How was shopping?”  
  
“Fantastic.” She beamed back, leaning forward a little as if divulging a secret, “Spent at least half of the money we had saved for this trip in one afternoon. I feel I deserve a medal, at least.”   
  
“Wow.” Dan couldn’t help but laugh. “That’s pretty impressive. What on Earth are you spending it on?”  
  
“Christmas gifts for my fabulous grandchildren, of course!” She tapped him in the arm, jokily, but she didn’t look like she was going to stay much longer, as she checked her watch, “And perhaps just a few self-Christmas presents.”  
  
“Ah, can’t forget those.”   
  
The short quiet that followed was soon punctured by her departure, her kind words wishing them well despite the mischievous glint in her eye; Dan knew that he’d be getting texts from every member of his family later that evening to ask about his 'new boyfriend’, and he had to hold in a sigh.  
  
“Bye, Grandma, I’ll see you tomorrow at dinner?” He kissed her cheek just before she assured him that he would, and following the gang of people she’d originally arrived with. As Dan turned back to Phil, his expression was apologetic, but he didn’t seem ashamed of his grandma at all, which Phil appreciated.

“Sorry about that, I had no idea she was going to be here.” He moved to pick up their stuff again, grinning a little shyly, and starting to move towards the screen as soon as Phil had picked up his stuff too. “Crazy coincidence, huh?”

“Indeed.” Phil balanced his drink and popcorn carefully, smiling almost uncontrollably as he realised that he was just mistaken for Dan’s boyfriend, unable to stop as they stepped into the screen, giving the man who checked their tickets a bit of a fright. “How was the photoshoot then, really? What did they have you do?”

“A lot of pouting and looking dramatically into the distance.” Dan laughed, as he pointed out an empty row for them to sit in questioningly, moving to sit in a seat near the end when Phil nodded approvingly, “I think I still have the eyeliner on - it all felt very Myspace in 2005.”

Phil didn’t want to say anything, but you could totally still see the eyeliner. Maybe it was just his inept knowledge of make-up, but he couldn’t help but notice all the sharp angles they’d put under his cheekbones, and the thin layer of black around his eyes around a light bronzer eyeshadow, and the final touch of gel they’d put in his hair to make it stick up in almost a quiff, rather than in a fringe like usual. It made Phil stop and stare in quite a pathetic manner when he saw Dan jogging across the car park ten minutes ago in the light drizzle with his jacket pulled over his head, and he had to really force himself to stop looking.

_This is just a friendship. Stop making it weird._

“Ah, Myspace.” He muttered, as they sat down in their seats, and the lights went down for the adverts. “God, remember when it was cool? How depressing.”

“You had an account?” Dan asked, a little surprised, even though literally everyone had a Myspace profile in 2005. “I can’t imagine.”

He surveyed Phil for a moment, then smirked a little bit, overriding his previous comments before Phil even had a chance to speak.

“No, wait, never mind. I can totally see it.”

“What, the eyeliner and the long fringe?” Phil grinned, trying to ignore how their arms were pressed together and they were muttering under their breaths to each other like two teenagers, “I fucking owned Myspace.”

“Ah, you wore eyeliner? Well, I’m not surprised.”

“Alright, at least I’m not still wearing it!”

Rolling his eyes, Dan then moved to rub his eyes a little, self-consciously, but Phil batted his hand away jokingly, ignoring the spark of energy that shot between them, the warmth of Dan’s fingers a surprise against his own.

“Don’t. Looks good.” He turned back to his popcorn as the screen brightened intensely, preparing to make snarky comments throughout the rest of the adverts, “In a weird, Myspace 2005 way.”

In that moment, Dan was incomparably glad that the darkness hid his red cheeks, and he smothered his uncontrollable smile from view as best he could.

-

Dan tried to quickly dust his feet off on the mat outside the house, the tiny 'porch’ seeming incredibly ineffective with the litres of rain pouring down on them, thanks to London suddenly deciding to live up to its stereotype. Soaked, the three of them stood on the doorstep, whilst Dan’s numb fingers fumbled with the keys.  
  
“Hurry the fuck up!” Alicia managed through chattering teeth at the back of the line, her hood pulled so far over her face that her words were muffled, “This is no time for precision, Howell.”  
  
“Jeez, sorry.” Dan sniped back, but his mind was filled with thoughts of the ebony-haired boy behind him, and he could barely even concentrate on the ritual bickering between him and Alicia. All he could think about was what Josh was going to do when he saw Phil walk in with them.  
  
No doubt Alicia had already texted him, but it was still worrying.  
  
“Are you solving a damn Rubix cube up there?” Phil’s voice made it through to Dan’s brain just as he clicked the lock, the northern twang tugging on something in his stomach, as it always did, and he barely had time to respond to the teasing before he pushed the door open.  
  
The warmth surrounding him in an instant, and he praised all the Gods that someone remembered to pay their heating bill this month. He moved into the hall and kicked his shoes off in the melée on the side that no one could ever be bothered to sort out, allowing the others to follow suit and shake off like wet dogs. Dan heard a faint mumble of 'shake it off’ from Phil’s direction, but he ignored it with a badly concealed grin, and tried to flatten his fringe a little so that it wouldn’t 'Hobbit Hair’.  
  
Phil had insisted on being taken to the V&A today, stopping to talk to Alicia when they saw her on her lunch break, and letting her show them around a few things that were apparently new. It had been lovely, especially since it was a rainy day, and during school term time, so the majority of people were at their office jobs or school. However, Alicia had insisted that Phil come back to theirs for take-out night, which Dan kind of appreciated, but he was also kind of shitting himself.  
  
“Thank fuck you’re back, I’m starving.” Steve yelled from the kitchen, his spine bent over a laptop on the breakfast bar, “We’re having pizza, what does everyone want?”  
  
“The usual-” Alicia called through, unwinding her scarf and throwing her duffel onto an array of coat-like items on some pegs. “Hang on!”  
  
She waited for both Dan and Phil to finish removing their outerwear before she moved into the kitchen and beckoned them to follow her, grabbing a beer and offering everyone else one as she approached the fridge, which they all accepted.  
  
“You guys remember Phil?” Dan asked the room - which actually only consisted of Steve - as he moved over to Steve’s laptop, pointing out the pizza he wanted on the screen, but waiting semi-patiently when Steve turned to greet Phil instead.  
  
“Nope!” Steve grinned, as he turned around, outstretching his hand for Phil to shake. “Hi Phil. I’m Steve.”  
  
“Hi. Good to finally meet you.” Phil’s smile was nervous, but he was clearly trying to make an effort, which Dan really appreciated.  
  
“What pizza will you have?” Steve asked, finally turning back to his computer screen, and sighing good-naturedly when he saw that Dan was still pointing at the one he wanted. “Daniel James Howell, I was asking the guest first, because I actually learnt manners. And get your wet fingers off my screen!”  
  
Rolling his eyes (but noting that Steve had clicked the pizza anyway) Dan accepted his beer from Alicia, unable to stop the little rush of love for his flatmates, no matter how nuts they were, and how often they argued with each other.  
  
“Uh, I’ll have a pepperoni, please.” Phil replied, when Steve turned to look at him again with an eyebrow raised in question, “I’m not fussed about sides.”  
  
“Kay,” Steve clicked on the pepperoni, which happened to be the same one Dan was getting. “So, how do you know Dan? Are you also a part of The Gayest Play There Ever Was?”  
  
“Uh,” Phil shot Dan a side glance at this nickname, but Dan’s eye-roll reassured him that it wasn’t an offensive term. “Yeah, I’m a makeup artist slash stagehand, depending on the time of day.”  
  
“Oh, sounds good. Is there a lot of work to do on stage then? I didn’t figure that there was too much. The set seemed pretty basic.”  
  
“Ah, it’s very deceptive then.” Phil smiled, relaxing a little, the firm grip on his drink the only indicator that he was slightly uncomfortable. “T'involves a lot of subtle rearranging and shuffling around. It probably doesn’t seem like a lot, but we sort out costumes, hair, sets, lighting, mikes, makeup, positions- all sorts.”  
  
“Without stagehands we’d just be a bunch of tossers making dramatic declarations on a stage.” Dan nodded, taking a sip of his beer, and then standing up from where he had been slouched on the breakfast bar. “I think we’ll head through now, if that’s cool.”  
  
“Yeah, sure, we’ll come through when the food gets here.”  
  
“Which’ll be like 3 days, because we chose to live in London, of all places.” Dan muttered absent-mindedly, as he led Phil through to the living room. He acknowledged Phil’s little huff of a laugh, and tried to ignore the little shiver that went through him as they moved into the new room, choosing a seat on the sofa, and indicating for Phil to sit where he liked.  
  
(Phil chose to sit on the other end of the sofa to Dan, and kind of wanted to shuffle closer, but didn’t dare, just in case) (as a dose of extra torture, Dan’s hair had gone all curly at the edges, and all Phil wanted to do was run his hands through it)

(All Dan could think about was Phil shuffling closer)   
  
“Jesus Christ,” Phil said, as he leant forward to put his beer on a coaster on the table in front of them, and suddenly comprehended what he was seeing in front of him for the first time, “Are those all DVDs?!”  
  
“Well, DVDs and video games.” Dan grinned, slightly pleased that Phil was impressed, his fingers playing with the water droplets on the glass of his bottle. “Josh and I made a pact in first year of Uni that we’d live together for, like, at least five years, and so I sold my Playstation, and my games, and we kept his console and bought a shit ton more games with the cash, as well as a better sound system. Since then, our obsession has only gotten worse, basically.”  
  
“How much do you think they’re worth in total?” Phil got back up out of his seat and went over to inspect the cupboard, his eyes moving over titles faster than he could read them.  
  
The entirety of one wall made up the cupboard, centred around the television in the middle, with a small cabinet above it for the xbox and all the possible controllers below it. Honestly, it was probably the centrepiece of their entire house.   
  
“Oh my God, I don’t want to know.” Dan bit his lip a little, imagining all the bargain deals they got on DVD bundles at charity shops, and all the brand new DVDs fresh out the cinema that they just couldn’t wait to own. “It’s somewhere in the thousands.”  
  
“Worth it?” Phil asked, running his fingers over some titles, noting that they were all in alphabetical order.  
  
“Uh, definitely.” Dan tried not to think about the fact that Josh’s wages paid for the majority of them, “Do you wanna pick the group movie?”  
  
“Ooh, that sounds tempting, but also terrifying.” Phil grinned, and returned to the sofa, throwing himself down onto it with an almost childlike energy, “I feel like I might cause a small war.”  
  
The chatter continued, mainly on the film front, occasionally going off on a tangent on another topic, and every so often crawling back to the art they’d seen that day. The beer levels slowly decreased in tandem with their nerves, and - by the time they reached the end of their bottles - the pair were significantly more relaxed and chilled.   
  
“Do you think giraffes make a noise?”  
  
“Uh, I dunno… I have literally never thought about it. Google it.”  
  
Josh arrived about four minutes before the pizza did, and he spent the entirety of that time in the kitchen, catching up with Alicia. He then helped her answer the door (even though Dan and Phil were technically closer) and with carrying the 10 boxes and two bottles of drink into the lounge, a little off-balanced. Phil instantly got up from his seat to help Alicia organise the boxes, whilst Dan just laughed at Josh almost dropping things, but smiling innocently when Josh glared in response.  
  
As soon as Phil finished setting the boxes out, Alicia left to drag Steve through and get more beers, leaving Josh to introduce himself to Phil, vaguely remembering him from the party. The look Josh gave Dan was enough to communicate every word he was thinking.   
  
Damn long term friendships and the consequent telepathy.

  
“So, are you enjoying working on the play, Phil?” Josh asked as he dragged the armchair a little closer to the table, starting to open the boxes on the table, the smell of pizza hitting them in a waft of deliciousness.  
  
“Yeah, it’s really great. Dream job, actually.” Phil clearly knew what to say on this topic, and his whole demeanour became animated, “I mean, I basically get to do make-up, organise things, and stare at pretty people all day. There’s literally no better job for me.”  
  
Josh laughed, but Dan could tell he caught the gender neutral use of 'people’. Reporters were bastards for that sort of thing.  
  
“Yeah, sounds like the life, man.” He indicated towards the pizza box in his hand, “Were you the pepperoni?”  
  
“Indeedy.”   
  
Dan could tell Phil was slightly past it when he started using phrases such as “coolio” and “indeedy”. Thankfully, Josh didn’t comment on it, and simply rearranged the boxes accordingly, keeping up the light chatter throughout the rearrangement and the return of their other housemates. Light negotiations followed, in which it was decided that Steve was to sit on the floor and lean up against the arm of the sofa, whilst Alicia would sit on the end of the sofa, pushing Dan into the middle and therefore a shit ton closer to Phil.  
  
Somehow, Dan didn’t think that this was a coincidence; the look in Josh’s eye didn’t help this suspicion, but he was secretly a little pleased for the excuse to have his leg pressed up against Phil’s.   
  
And the next hour and a half passed almost without their notice.  
  
-  
  
Almost as if he was falling, Dan suddenly jolted awake in a moment of horrified realisation; the pizza was gone, the room was still dark, but the movie was over.  
  
He had fallen asleep on Phil’s fucking shoulder.  
  
His housemates’ faces though, that was really the thing he was worried about. As he regained consciousness and began apologising to Phil (albeit half-heartedly, because he wasn’t really that sorry), he realised that Phil was avoiding his eye, and looked like he was trying not to laugh. A brief look at everyone else’s faces told him that the others wore the same expression, and he couldn’t help but let the confusion seep into his veins.  
  
“What’s going on?” He asked, slowly, trying to sit upright without having to lean on Phil again, “Do I have something on my face?”  
  
And then it broke.  
  
It started off with a muffled squeak from Josh, who was clearly trying to hold in a laugh, and - a few seconds later - Alicia lost it, then Phil, then Steve, and finally Josh broke for real; laughter was ringing in Dan’s ears, but it wasn’t mean - they didn’t seem to be laughing at him exactly.  
  
Dan instantly slid his phone out of his pocket and switched on front camera, before groaning loudly and flopping backwards onto the sofa, only increasing the hilarity.  
  
“Are you guys literally five?”  
  
“Literally.” Josh mimicked, but he was still laughing, unable to look Dan in the eye as he said his line.  
  
“I hate you all.” Dan mumbled, inspecting the marker-pen damage on his face with little contempt; he didn’t have work until Friday evening, so that wasn’t a problem, it was just the fact that his flatmates were apparently the most immature twats on the planet.  
  
Along his left cheek, he had a wonky 'I <3 Josh’, and - what appeared to be - a tiny dick underneath. On his forehead (clearly Alicia’s work), he had a little Mona Lisa, which was actually surprisingly good, considering a tiny patch of skin was her canvas. And on his right cheek, he had…well, he wasn’t entirely sure what.  
  
“What the fuck is this?” Dan asked, pointing at said cheek, when the raucous laughter calmed a little. Whilst it encouraged a few further giggles, it was mainly smothered by Phil announcing:  
  
“Dan, that’s clearly a cat.”  
  
“A cat?” Dan looked back into his phone, and back up at Phil, a slightly doubtful expression on his face, “Okay, no seriously, what is it?”  
  
“No, it’s a cat!” Phil almost looked offended, but the grin on his face meant he couldn’t really be too wounded. Leaning forward, he looked into Dan’s front facing camera as well, and pointed out the features on Dan’s face “Look, here’s the tail, and here’s the head.”  
  
“Right.” Whilst he tried to follow the trail Phil’s fingers were tracing, all he could think was that they looked really fucking good together on camera. Their hair and skin almost balanced each other out, even in the dimly lit room, and their similar heights didn’t draw attention to Dan’s freakishly long body, as Phil technically had one too.   
  
Tuning in as Phil finished off his explanation, and finally nodding his agreement that 'sure, cats don’t technically need four legs’, Dan shuffled out of position, standing up and glaring a little at his other flatmates, who definitely weren’t cute enough to get away with the vandalism.  
  
“I’m going to go and wash my face now, you traitors, and I am so not tidying this shit up.”  
  
Whilst he wasn’t really angry, Dan felt that stomping out with a little bit of flair was necessary.  
  
What he wasn’t gambling on, however, was Phil following him up to the bathroom a few minutes later, and offering his help.   
  
A quiet knock on the door stopped him from scrubbing viciously at his face with one of Alicia’s face wipes, which only really appeared to be smudging it. He was sat up on the sink, the packet in one hand and his other hand with the wipe, and still wearing a mildly exasperated expression.   
  
“Dan? Can I come in?” Phil’s voice came through the thin door, his voice slightly apprehensive.  
  
“Yep.” Dan angled his face, so that he could see the far side in the mirror on the opposite wall, trying to remove the tiny dick as best he could.   
  
Slowly, the door opened, and Phil stepped in, closing it firmly behind him.  
  
“How’s it going?” He asked, his voice still hesitant, and Dan couldn’t decide if Phil really thought that he was mad at them. In response, Dan smiled at Phil, hoping to relax his concern.  
  
“Swimmingly,” The sarcasm seeped out before he could stop it, but he knew he didn’t look annoyed, thanks to the mirror in front of him, as he angled his face again to survey the damage. “Why won’t this stuff come off?”  
  
“Make up wipes weren’t made for sharpies.” Phil explained, and opened the cupboard next to Dan’s head, finding what he was looking for in a moment, finding a pack of cotton pads in the next few seconds, “This stuff is a bit stronger, but it’s still going to take a lot of force, I’m afraid.”  
  
“Ah, fuck it.” Dan threw the screwed up wipe in the direction of the bin (unsuccessfully, as it hit the floor just shortof the bin) and turned himself towards Phil, naturally falling into the position of having Phil do his face for him.  
  
Squeezing the stuff out onto the pad, Phil then proceeded to gently wipe at Dan’s cheeks, his expression only mildly soothed, and his brow furrowed in concentration.  
  
“Has the hilarity decreased down there?” Dan asked, after a few moments of silence, and the realisation that he and Phil basically just wordlessly communicated hitting him.   
  
“Yeah, sorry.” Phil actually did seem genuinely sorry, which warmed Dan’s inside a little. “At least you don’t have to clear up?”  
  
“I guess so.” Dan swung his legs a little, but it was a bit awkward with Phil being so close, so he stopped. “Did they send you up here because I was the least likely to yell at you?”  
  
“Uh,” Phil’s momentary pause answered Dan’s question immediately, and the small, sheepish smile on his face confirmed it, “Ma-aybe.”  
  
Flickering yellow lights set a strange mood about the room, the cold surface of the side contrasting with the heat of Phil’s body so close to Dan was making him shiver; their knees were practically touching, and Phil’s gentle fingers were holding Dan’s face still as he applied liberal pressure to remove the incriminating drawings. A small lull settled over Dan as he smiled at Phil, watching him shamelessly as he worked.   
  
All he could think about was how Phil’s lips might feel on his.  
  
“I’m glad you bonded with them.”   
  
“What?” Phil was so concentrated on trying to remove the marker pen from Dan’s pores that this took him by surprise, “Who, your flatmates?”  
  
Dan’s hum confirmed the question.  
  
“Yeah, they seem nice. Bit mad, but nice.” Phil grinned, gently moving Dan’s face so he could do the other cheek, “Why?”  
  
“Why, what?”  
  
“Why are you glad I bonded with them?”  
  
“Oh,” Dan suddenly realised that he hadn’t thought about this response at all, “I dunno. I guess… I just don’t bring theatre people home a lot. Well, not since Annabelle really. And that was like, 3 years ago.”  
  
“Annabelle?”   
  
Dan swallowed.  
  
“My ex.”  
  
“Oh.”  
  
The face touching continued for about half a minute before Phil finally replied.  
  
“I’m glad I get on with them too.” He said, his voice low, and his eyes determinedly focused on Dan’s skin rather than his eyes, finally moving to work on his forehead. The small smile on Dan’s face was soon mimicked on Phil’s, although they had to avoid each other’s eyes to stop it being awkward.   
  
But somehow, even when their eyes eventually met, it was never really awkward again.  
  
–

  
“Hey, is it alright if I sit?” Phil shuffled sideways along the row of theatre seats so that he was next to Dan, and pointed loosely at the chair beside the brunette. It was the last break on their last day of performances (ever) and Dan didn’t really know how to feel about it; they’d been performing since September, and now it was almost all over.  
  
At least maybe he could tell Phil about the feelings he had for him now; about the nights when all Dan craved was his touch, and the days he spent dreaming up dumb little dates they could go on.  
  
However, one look at Phil’s face told him that this moment was not the right time for that.  
  
“Yeah, yeah.” Dan shuffled slightly so that he was leant slightly more on the right hand side than the left to give Phil a little more room, but was soon distracted by the items in Phil’s hands. “Did you bring /cake/?”  
  
“Uh, duh.” Phil grinned, handing a cupcake to Dan, and beginning to peel the wrapper off his own, “Carrie brought them in, didn’t you see?”  
  
“She’s going to make me fat, that girl.” Dan began to peel the wrapper off his cupcake too, marveling a little at the intricate icing on top, that had little stars and hearts all over it. “What made you decide to join me today?”  
  
“Well, you weren’t in the make-up room, so I figured I’d come to your regular hangout spot for a change, seeing as you always come to mine.” Phil ran his finger along the top of the cake, deciding to eat the icing first by sucking it off his finger, and Dan had to really force himself to look ahead instead of fixating on the way Phil’s lips closed around his finger and sucked.  
  
“Well, then it’s good to see you creep out of the shadows.” Dan said, after a moment, watching Jack talking to Chris on stage about something for a moment before snapping back into his conversation. “Maybe you’ll actually get a tan for once.”  
  
“Daniel James Howell, that’s very rude.” Mock offended, Phil waited a few more seconds - just long enough for Dan to fall into a false sense of security, and bringing his cupcake up to his face - before Phil acted.  
  
He reached out, and pushed the cupcake straight into Dan’s face.  
  
For a moment, he almost couldn’t believe he did it, but then Dan’s shocked face turned to look at him, the underside of his nose and the entirety of the mouth area covered in icing, and he just couldn’t stop laughing.  
  
And Dan was obviously mesmerised by the little poke of tongue that peeked out of Phil’s mouth as he laughed at Dan’s icing-covered face, and the way Phil’s eyes crinkled up, and his hand came up slightly as if to cover his mouth.  
  
But it was too fucking late.  
  
“You-”  
  
Dan used the remainder of the icing on his cupcake to shove into Phil’s face, cutting off any words he might have had, and watching as the laughter paused momentarily, before it started again. His giggles soon infected Dan, and suddenly they were both breathless, arms clutching their stomachs and unable to move.  
  
Dust coated their lungs as a result, and it didn’t take long before Dan had to stop laughing in case he had a seizure, which would have been terrible press for closing night. He wiped the tears from the corners of his eyes, released a few stray giggles, and turned back to Phil, who was already staring back at Dan like he’d hung the moon, although he tried to hide it.  
  
“Do you want to go for a walk after rehearsals finish?” Dan blurted out, suddenly, as if his brain had pushed him to say it, realising it was now or never. Immediately after he asked this, he started to try to smear some icing off his face a little, and failing epically.   
  
“Sure,” Phil replied, his heart beating a little faster at the prospect, as he watched Dan fail to get the icing off his face, “Oh for God’s sake, Dan, you’re really making a mess of that.”  
  
“And whose fault is that?” Dan teased, but accepted defeat, “Fine, take me to your magic cleansing wipes.”  
  
Phil stood up almost immediately, and took Dan’s hand to lead him out without thinking twice about it, slotting their fingers together like they were built for it.  
  
He walked almost half way along the row before he realised what he’d done, the warmth of Dan’s fingers between his suddenly hitting his nervous system, and he did his best to subtly drop it when they reached the end of the line of chairs, although the subtlety wasn’t massively successful. He dug his hand into his pocket for his phone instead, not letting the conversation waver once, and was surprised to see that Dan’s cheeks were tinged pink when he finally looked up at him, the pair still kind-of bickering about who should take the blame for The Icing Incident.  
  
Phil decided there and then that if Dan didn’t say something on this damned walk of theirs, then he would.  
  
Watching from the stage as they left the room, Chris smirked openly at the pair, before turning to Jack as they shut the door, looking very pleased with himself.  
  
“In the next few hours, you’re going to find that you owe me £20, Mr. Jack Howard. Prepare to pay up.”  
  
“Shut up, Chris.” Jack tried to play it cool, but he did look a tiny bit concerned. “If they can keep it in their pants 'till midnight, then the money’s mine. They can do that.”  
  
A flash of doubt crossed his face at that moment, and Chris’ smirk only widened.  
  
“Good luck convincing them to stay at the afterparty 'till midnight, then.”  
  
Jack had never wanted to throw a lit match at Chris any more than he did at the very moment, watching him walk off stage with a confident expression and the swagger to match.  
  
 _They could keep it together 'till midnight, right?_

After what he just witnessed, however, Jack wasn’t so sure.

-

“Look, if you’re going to insult Katniss Everdeen, at least prepare some suitable ammunition.”  
  
The two of them were sat on a cold bench by the Thames, drinking mulled wine out of polystyrene cups and watching the London nightlife unfold. It had to be nearing 0 degrees, and it was pretty damn dark, but neither of them appeared to feel the cold, and had been chatting animatedly for the past hour or so, interspersed with the occasional comfortable silence. At some point, their discussion had turned to movies, and Dan was learning some strange things about Phillip Michael Lester.

“I never said I didn’t like her, I just said her character could have been better written in the film.”

“Better, how?”  
  
“Well,” Phil began, turning his body on the bench so they were totally face-to-face, totally ready to whip out some social justice, “For starters, she was supposed to be a Native American woman. And on the asexuality spectrum. And deaf in one ear. As much as I love Jennifer Lawrence, she was definitely not Native American.”

  
Whilst Dan made some unspoken protests, along the line of 'I’m considering it’ noises and vague hand gestures, he eventually sighed, and agreed with Phil.  
  
“Fine, she was the wrong race, and had the wrong sexuality, and she was generally too able, but there’s nothing wrong with her actual character.”  
  
“I guess not with her specifically, but another thing I always wondered was why the hell no one else ever volunteered for their siblings, or their friends? Like, I have a brother, and I’d volunteer in a heartbeat. You’ve got one as well, haven’t you? Would you volunteer for him?”  
  
“Yeah.” Dan answered, barely having to think about it. “In theory, of course I would, and I’d like to hope that if it really happened, then I would, but how would I know?”  
  
“I guess.” Reluctantly, Phil accepted the boundaries of fiction, but continued with his point nonetheless, “Still, you’d think more people, if this was real, would volunteer. Like, often enough for it not be a massive deal when someone does do it, y'know?”  
  
“Yeah, I mean, you’d hope so, anyway.”  
  
There was quiet for a few more moments, before Phil opened his mouth again, surveying the Christmas lights on a nearby tree as he did so, almost absent-mindedly.  
  
“Also, why didn’t they make Peeta and Finnick a couple? They were clearly secretly in love, and they would have made a really hot couple.”  
  
A second or two passed as Dan processed this information, before bursting out laughing, so much that a passing couple by looked over in surprise and mild concern, before realising the sound was joyful and not a noise of extreme pain, and continuing on their way. Phil couldn’t help but smile at Dan’s laughter, and even giggle a little himself, despite not really understanding what was so funny.  
  
Finally, when Dan was able to form words, he turned his head back round to Phil, his dimples deep with mirth and his eyes betraying honest emotion that was rare to find in an actor.  
  
“You’re a strange one, Phil Lester.”

As Dan drained the last of his mulled wine - now probably cold - Phil couldn’t help but watch the process; his perfect, long fingers balancing the cheap cup on his pink lips, the dimple in his cheek and his smooth, soft skin looking almost Grecian in its loveliness.

“We should probably get going.” Phil muttered, trying not to let himself get distracted, but Dan had already noticed. They both sat for a moment before Dan made a noise as if to agree with him, and began to shuffle.

It was the night of the final show, and they had to get back before everything started again. It was only about 5pm, but they needed to get back to get Dan into costume and makeup. The light had already gone - it was December, the light went at about 3:30pm - so it was almost dark, and the streetlights were blurring into focus. They both knew they had a long night ahead of them; the wrap party was happening straight after the show, and they knew that Dean had ordered a shitton of booze in preparation.

“Or,” Dan said, suddenly, his words short, as if he couldn’t believe he was saying them, his body quite still, “We could not.”

“What?” Phil turned back to look at Dan, the determined look in Dan’s eye startling him, his entire body held still and his lips looking almost raw in comparison to his pale skin. Phil’s mouth dropped open a bit in surprise, Dan’s appearance resonating with something deep within his core, before it was suddenly happening.

Dan’s lips were pressed up against his; warm, and tasting of mulled wine. After a moment of shock at the sensation, Phil kissed back, the cold on his fingers disapparating as he put his hand behind Dan’s neck, winding his fingers into Dan’s hair and gripping slightly, causing Dan to let his mouth drop open a little and the kiss to deepen. His other hand slid to Dan’s thigh, and he felt Dan shift beneath him as he let his fingers dig in a little, their bodies moving closer together simultaneously.

It only took a few moments for them to stop, and Phil’s mind was reeling, his breathing mismatched and his eyes unfocused.

“ _Shit_.”

“Yeah, shit.” Dan mumbled back, before grinning, and letting out a small giggle, the hysteria of the moment rising in his chest, and the sight of Phil looking totally undone was just a bit too much for his brain to compute. “Was it- was that really stupid?”

“No. God, no.” Phil was still wrapped up in the moment, his mind whirling at a million miles an hour, “Fuck, how long have you wanted to do that?”

“Fucking ages.”

Phil’s left hand was still resting on Dan’s thigh, sending little sparks through Dan as the fingers adjusted, his digit tracing circles.

“Why did you wait so long?”

“Why did _you_?” Dan retorted, quickly, as soon as he understood the meaning of Phil’s words, slightly indignant. “We both could have done it.”

“I thought you didn’t want to.” Phil murmured, his voice soft in comparison to Dan’s indignant one, which instantly made Dan regret his harsh tone. “You were always pulling away.”

“Was not.” Dan replied, pleased that Phil hadn’t yet pulled back from their entanglement, even though it was a bit strange and awkward, “I just didn’t want to have to see you every day afterwards if things went wrong.”

“So you waited 'till the last day possible.” Phil couldn’t help but smile, at the weirdly sensible logic in that, that meant Dan had been denying them both for over three months. “That’s some serious self-control you got there.”

“You’re telling me.” Dan huffed, but he was smiling, his eyes bright and his cheeks pink, looking like the epitome of a Christmas miracle. After a moment, another expression dawned on his face in a moment of realisation, “God, why couldn’t I have waited til the afterparty? How the hell am I going to remain sane on stage, knowing that you’re so close to me?”

“You can manage.” Phil mumbled back, amused by Dan’s melodrama, but he was still a little bit in shock from what just happened.

Gently, Phil pressed another kiss to Dan’s lips, almost not believing that he could do that so freely, and have the soft lips kiss him back.

Somewhere in the distance, the £20 sat in Jack Howard’s wallet begin to bid his farewells, because there was no damn way that these two were going to keep it in their pants until midnight. Especially since they were going to be forcefully separated for several hours in between.

_No damn way._

 

-end of part two-

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> part III (the last part) is going on my tumblr on friday night so i'll try to update this one then too!!


	3. part III

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> It had been almost an hour, and Dan was reaching the end of his tether; he'd spoken to countless critics, pretending he was interested in what they were saying and trying to ignore Phil in the corner of his conscious, nagging at him in his little blazer jacket.
> 
> "Yeah, yeah, I totally get what you mean!" Dan agreed with a reporter who appeared to be living the dream, and was going off on a mini-tangent on the representation of LGBT+ characters in the modern media, and her enthusiasm was a bit intimidating, so Dan was kind of leaving her to it. All he really had to do was agree with her every so often, and nod enthusiastically throughout. However, the only LGBT+ thoughts in his head at that moment were mainly centered around Phil.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> DISCLAIMER: I don’t agree with any of the offensive language, prejudices or actions used for dramatic effect in this fanfiction, and I do not claim any of the people mentioned condone or perform these acts either. I also do not claim to know any of the people mentioned in the text beyond the persona they present to the internet, and therefore am not trying to suggest or deny anything about their personal lives in writing about them.

 

It had been almost an hour, and Dan was reaching the end of his tether; he'd spoken to countless critics, pretending he was interested in what they were saying and trying to ignore Phil in the corner of his conscious, nagging at him in his little blazer jacket.

"Yeah, yeah, I totally get what you mean!" Dan agreed with a reporter who appeared to be living the dream, and was going off on a mini-tangent on the representation of LGBT+ characters in the modern media, and her enthusiasm was a bit intimidating, so Dan was kind of leaving her to it. All he really had to do was agree with her every so often, and nod enthusiastically throughout. However, the only LGBT+ thoughts in his head at that moment were mainly centered around Phil.

"Hey, sorry, could I just steal Dan for a moment?" Jack suddenly popped into the conversation, ruining a lovely image Dan was having of Phil with just a bowtie and boxers on. "Just have to ask him something quickly."

Whilst the reporter didn't look best pleased about being interrupted, she couldn't exactly deny Jack, and motioned for Dan to follow him, a forced smile on her face as she turned back to a circle of critics behind her.

"You looked like you were on another planet." Jack muttered in Dan's ear, not-so-subtly checking his watch and finding it to be 11:30. Only half an hour more. "Thought you might appreciate a bit of a change."

Gently, Dan was steered towards a group of less-posh looking people, all wearing more normal clothes, and Dan could only feel relief and gratitude towards Jack.

"Who are these people then?" He asked, quickly, before they got within earshot.

"Old University friends who've got fairly high theatre jobs." Jack hissed in Dan's ear as he dropped him off on his rounds, leaving Dan to push his way in, the last thing he heard from Jack was 'just half an hour more!'.

Smiling, Dan attempted to elbow himself into the circle before he spotted Louise just off to his left, in a holographic dress that made Dan's eyes feel a bit funny if he looked at it for too long. Before anyone in the circle particularly took notice of his presence, he ducked back out again, throwing his manners out the window in an attempt to leave the godforsaken party.

"Hey, Louise!" Dan grinned at her as he waited for her to refill her drink. Her hair was curly and her dip dye had been redone, but her face looked exhausted.

“Alright?” She asked, smiling at him, her eyes happy despite her obvious fatigue.

“Yeah, not too bad. Wading my way through countless critics, but what else is new?” Dan joked, following Louise to a spot in the corner with a few chairs and sitting down next to her, only just audible over the top of the constant chatter, “Are you alright?”

“Yeah, I’m good,” She puffed air out of her cheeks, taking a swig of her drink, “Darcy didn’t feel good last night, so I was up ‘til 4 trying to help her sleep, so I’m a bit dead on my feet, honestly.”

“Why wasn’t she at Matt’s?” Dan asked.

“He had a parents evening, so we had a girly sleepover, except she ate too many sweets, I think.”

“Ah, bless.” Dan smiled at her tired face, hoping to drag a laugh out of her at some point. It was their last night, after all. “I haven’t seen Darcy in ages. We should do a day out at some point during the off-time.”

“We should.” Louise smiled, gently, appreciating Dan’s enthusiasm, “Me, you, and Phil. She’d love that.”

Phil’s name sparked something in Dan again, and he couldn’t help but look around the room behind him for a head of black hair. Unfortunately, he wasn’t as subtle as he thought he was, and Louise’s smile stretched into a little smirk.

"Looking for someone?" She grinned, taking a sip of her drink to cover it as Dan narrowed his eyes a little at her.  
  
"Maybe." Dan mumbled back, unable to stop checking the crowd behind Louise even with this chastise. "Not my fault you mentioned his name."  
  
"Have you talked to him today?" Louise asked, her eyes hopeful, but trying not to give anything away.  
  
"Yes." Dan couldn't help the little blush that spread over his cheeks, and Louise instantly knew that everything was okay. "We, uh, well- I don't really know what we did. But it happened."  
  
"Good." She affirmed immediately, patting his arm and nodding in a very motherly fashion, before her smile returned again, even brighter than before, "I bet it's killing you to see him in his blazer."  
  
All Dan could manage was a withering glance in her direction, which only confirmed this suggestion, and she laughed, a little bit of pride rising up within her.  
  
"Go get 'im, then." She nudged him, but Dan shook his head, "Why not?"  
  
"Jack said I need to stay till midnight." He sighed, sipping his drink again and checking his phone, "Twenty minutes. And that's _after_ I skipped out on his theatre people, so probably a bit longer than that now."  
  
Louise rolled her eyes.  
  
"Alright, Dan, I'm going against a confidentiality pact here, and I'm about to tell you something that you must swear not to tell Jack or Chris that I told you."  
  
"Uh, alright?" Whilst he was noticeably confused, he also looked sort of intrigued.  
  
"Jack and Chris have a bet going on about you and Phil. Made it after Opening Night. Chris said you two would get together before the end of the show run, and Jack said afterwards, and they decided that today was going to count as the last day. Jack wants you to stay till midnight because then he'll get the money, and Chris wants you to leave beforehand, so he gets the money."  
  
It took a moment for all this to go in, but when it did, Dan still looked a bit confused.  
  
"But then, hasn't Chris already won?"  
  
"Has he?"  
  
Dan wasn't really sure what he and Phil were at that point, but he figured it was definitely something more than friends.  
  
"I think so." He said, his voice a little unsure, but he repeated himself, "Yes, I think so."  
  
"Well, what's stopping you leaving then?" Louise asked, sipping her drink and trying not to act like this response was exactly what she was hoping for. "If Chris has already won?"  
  
"Uh," Dan thought about it a little bit, "I guess I could go. Would it be weird to text Phil?"  
  
"Nope. Get outta here, lovebirds." Louise joked, clearly a little tipsy, but infinitely pleased for her friends (who finally got their shit together), "I'll save my fangirling 'till you're gone."  
  
"That would be appreciated." Dan deadpanned, pulling out his phone in an instant.  
  
**dan 23:42  
hey, meet u by the side entrance in five??  
**  
He didn't even have to wait ten seconds for a response.  
  
**phil 23:42  
           omg make it two im dying over here  
  
dan 23:42  
k same**  
  
"I presume I'll be seeing you tomorrow then?" Louise asked, as Dan checked his pockets for everything and fluffed up his fringe. At his momentary confusion, she prompted him, "At the group dinner? Or 'The Last Supper', as Chris so respectfully called it?"  
  
"Oh," A vague memory came back to Dan, but his mind was too preoccupied for him to care too much, "Yeah, sure. See you tomorrow."  
  
Dan began to make his way through the crowd, waving at a few people as he went, but mostly concentrating on getting the fuck out. Jack appeared in his peripheral vision, but he wasn't prominent for Dan to take notice, as he slipped out the inner door and into the dark corridor leading to the front door. The dark red walls and the dim lights set the atmosphere further, contrasting so dramatically with the bright lights and loud chatter of the previous rooms.  
  
The anticipation was killing him.  
  
Suddenly, he felt a hand on his arm, and he almost threw it off before he came back to his senses.  
  
"What?" He asked, borderline rudely, as he turned, imagining Phil waiting at the side door with his bright eyes and his blazer, following his form so perfectly Dan couldn't help but stare. However, when he finally met the person's eye, he forced himself to compose his features and tone of voice, "Oh, hi Jack."  
  
"Where are you going?" Jack sounded very faux-casual, his glasses a little askew, though his hair was immaculate, and the combination of his tone of voice and the death grip on Dan's arm confirmed the suspicion of his desperate desire to win this damn bet, "We said midnight."  
  
"Jack, I'm really bloody tired, and I'll see you all at the dinner tomorrow." Dan tried to reason with him, but the grip on his arm didn't budge, and in the end he admitted defeat with a sigh. "Chris already won the bet, Jack."  
  
There was a few seconds of awkward silence as Jack processed this.  
  
"Oh." He let go of Dan's arm, a shadow of a pout appearing on his features, "Could you seriously not keep it in your pants for another twenty minutes?!"  
  
Dan's only reply was a laugh, and he pointed to the door at the end of the corridor, indicating that he was leaving.  
  
"See you tomorrow."  
  
"I'll be taking the money out of your wages, Howell!" Jack called down the corridor after him, receiving a cheery middle finger as Dan exited the door, shrugging on his coat, and grinning uncontrollably.  
  
The door glided shut with a small click behind Dan as he froze, finally reunited with the one person he'd been waiting for, _desperate_ for - the entire evening.  
  
Leant against the wall, his head down against the cold, Phil Lester stood in his blazer, shirt and the dumb little bowtie that Louise dared him to put on at 10:30pm that evening. His long legs pulled Dan's eyes southwards, as he tried to comprehend the image before him, blinking a few times to try and dislodge the shock registering in his brain.  
  
_Jesus fucking Christ._

Alerted by the click of the door, Phil looked up, his mouth curving into a smile as soon as he saw it was Dan, and moving towards him instantly. His eyes were full of warmth despite the cold air, and his hands were soon upon Dan, one gently cupping his chin to move him the tiny angle of height difference between them.  
  
Everything about this kiss was painfully soft; the gentle pressure of their lips, the soft touch of Phil's other hand on Dan's waist, and the light tangle of Dan's fingers in Phil's hair, the lazy movements of their tongues against each other; everything came together in a moment of true intimacy, surrounded by the London life and yellow streetlights, and the scent of smoke and petrol hanging in the heavy air around them.

As Phil's fingers started to drift from cupping Dan's cheek, trailing slowly down his neck, causing a shiver, and their gentle kiss to turn into a needy one.

They barely had time to breathe as they pulled apart, Dan's voice raspy and desperate.  
  
"How close is your flat?"  
  
Thankfully, Phil sounded equally as broken.  
  
"Close enough."  
  
They almost couldn't keep their hands off each other as they struggled down to the cab section at the front of the theatre, ready for all the drunken people to begin to arrive in a state of stupor. However, just as Dan extracted his arms and lips from Phil, rummaging in his pockets to check for cash as they approached a driver, he heard someone say his name.  
  
"Uh, hi, are you Dan Howell?"  
  
_I swear to God the universe is plotting against me._

It was three girls, average age of 15, all holding programmes, and looking a bit wide-eyed. Dan smiled at them, a little quizzically, before the penny dropped, and he realised they wanted him to sign their programmes.  
  
"Oh, yeah, hi." He took the sharpie extended to him, and quickly smoothed his signature onto the three glossy sheets in front of him. "Did you enjoy the show?"  
  
"Yeah, it was really great." The girl on the far left said, enthusiastically, clutching her programme to her chest after he signed it, clearly the quickest to recover from seeing Dan shoving his tongue down someone else's throat. "All the acting was incredible, I mean - you and Chris? In that scene together? It was _amazing_.”  
  
"Thanks," Dan smiled at them, trying to ignore the feeling of Phil beside him as he waited patiently for Dan to finish drawing the smiley faces, "Not gonna lie, that was mainly Chris. He's always challenging me with his emotions, it's kind of exhausting."  
  
"I cried, like, four times." The second girl added, smiling shyly when Dan made eye contact with her.  
  
"At least you didn't have to watch it every day in rehearsal." Phil suddenly joked from beside Dan, as the sharpie lid was replaced with a click. "I cried every time they bloomin’ rehearsed it, and _then_ had to watch them perform it four times a week. It was torture."  
  
"Oh, you flatter me so." Dan joked, fluttering his hand in front of his face in a mock of being overwhelmed, but was secretly surprised at Phil's honesty. As he waved goodbye to the girls, wishing them a nice night, their faces still a little stunned, he couldn't help but give Phil a shit-eating grin, which was only met with rolling eyes.

They both moved towards the cab, and Dan's hand sneakily found Phil's as they slid in next to each other, the reality of the situation only resettling again when Phil reeled off his address to the cab driver, barely even breathing as he did so.  
  
Dan's other hand slid onto Phil's knee as he leant back in his seat, and Phil's intake of breath was enough to encourage him to move further, slowly moving into Phil's body as the cab moved away, the gentle hum of the car and the shitty radio muffling their voices a little.  
  
Hot breath on Phil's ear caused him to shudder, as Dan mumbled teasingly, his body gently pressed up against Phil's side, and his hand sliding up his leg.  
  
"It was _torture_ , was it?"  
  
"Fuck." Phil hissed, the sudden change in pace sending shocks through his system, and his hands found themselves on Dan's waist in a moment of clarity. "Dan-"  
  
Normally, Dan wasn't half as confident with people - Christ, Annabelle initiated almost every single move in their last relationship - but something about the alcohol buzzing in his body and the sound of Phil's mouth stuttering out his name was pushing his confidence into dangerous territory.  
  
Slowly, Dan pushed his fingers up into Phil's hair, his face impossibly warm next to Phil's, and his tongue tantalisingly close to Phil's ear. When Dan finally nibbled the earlobe, after solid seconds of heavy breathing and leaded senses, Phil's breath audibly caught in his throat, and his body started to react to the touching.  
  
"Shit, Dan-"  
  
Dan hadn't really heard Phil swear much (apart from a minor Mario Kart incident), but the sounds he was making in the back of his throat, and the deepness of his voice as he said them, was just driving Dan insane.

The cotton of Phil's trousers slid soundlessly under Dan's moving palm, his hand resting just on the inside of Phil's thigh, before he paused, not wanting to cause a scene in the taxi, and definitely not wanting to make Phil uncomfortable. However, whilst Phil's breathing seemed to be telling him that this was what he wanted, and the tiny keening noises in the back of his throat only adding to that, Dan made a internal decision to wait until they got to the flat before he let things get that out of control.  
  
Phil took this momentary pause as a sign to move his head a little, and began to kiss Dan once more. Sensing Dan's hesitation, and not wanting to make him uncomfortable either, Phil decided to move back to safer ground, even though Dan's hand was still warming his inner thigh, and it was driving him half insane.  
  
These kisses were messy, tongues sliding all over the place, and inciting the occasional tooth clash. Phil's fingers had travelled back into Dan's hair by now, and their gentle tugging caused small moans from Dan, although he'd never admit to it afterwards. Phil's skin was on fire with the feel of Dan draped all over him, every inch he touched feeling like a square of Wildfire, the scent of Dan's cologne intoxicating him, and almost causing a short circuit of all brain functions.  
  
By now, they were stopped in some traffic around the back of Piccadilly, drawing closer and closer to Phil's flat as the car inched forward. Whilst the taxi driver had probably had, and seen, a lot worse than this, the pair still didn't want the first time they did anything to be in the back of a cab, with someone listening in the whole time.  
  
The kissing continued, slowing down torturously as they reached their destination; the car pulling up on Phil's street and slowing into a parking space alerted them to this, their hands removing themselves in an attempt to maintain normalcy.  
  
Cold December air hit them as soon as they got out of the car, contrasting to the steamy situation they'd just left behind. Dan was practically hopping from foot to foot as Phil paid the taxi driver, his eyes raking over Phil's rumpled attire, and priding himself on being the creator of Phil's disaster of a hairstyle, with bits sticking up all over the place.  
  
In the end, a lowkey frustrated Phil just told the man to keep the change, and he grabbed Dan's hand as he pulled him towards the door, his fingers fumbling with the keys.  
  
"Are you solving a damn Rubik's cube up there?" Dan asked, softly, mockingly, as Phil finally managed to shove the key into the lock, earning him a withering glance, but he could still see the small grin that Phil was fighting off.  
  
As they spilled into the hallway, and closed the door (" _quietly_!") behind them, Phil shuffled back towards Dan, pushing him gently up against the wall, and continuing the heavy petting from the cab.  
  
Except this time, Phil's hand was the one on Dan's inner thigh.  
  
Dan had been dreaming about this situation for almost three months, but it was nothing compared to the heat of Phil's palm against his skin, his fingers digging in, and inching tantalisingly close.  
  
As the digits reached dangerous territory, Dan's trousers certainly feeling the tense aftermath of the movement, he couldn't help but let out a strained gasp.  
  
"Please, Phil, fuck-"  
  
And with that, Phil pulled back completely, causing Dan to make a small keening noise in the back of his throat (that he would resolutely deny later). The removal of Phil's hand on Dan's thigh was replaced by Phil lacing his fingers through Dan's, and tugging him firmly up the stairs, the determination on his face not helping Dan's 'downstairs' situation in the slightest.  
  
As they stumbled their way through the hallway and up the stairs, the pair could hardly keep their hands off each other, and they ended up practically falling through Phil’s front door. It took half a minute to get from the downstairs hallway to Phil’s room, but it felt like an eternity to them, each step only seeming to take them centimetres forward.

The door to Phil’s room swung open under Dan’s touch, and Phil thanked every fucking star in the sky that it wasn’t a total tip that day, and instantly pulled Dan back into his personal bubble.

Inspecting the room briefly, Dan noted that it was darker than usual; the weak light from the bedside lamp lit the mid-blue room, but the knick-knacks scattered around seeming comfortingly familiar. Dan had been in here a few times, but never in this mood - with this purpose. The friendly checked sheets - the same ones Dan had but coloured - suddenly had a whole different meaning to the room, altering the atmosphere significantly with the tiny adjustments to the pair’s behaviour. One window (and a sputtering streetlight) was normally the source of the light in the room, but seeing as it was midnight, its contribution was limited.

Phil pushed Dan onto the bed as soon as they re-gathered their thoughts, their bodies touching once more as they ended up side by side, crotches rubbing up against each other in desperate attempts to relieve the friction. In smooth, swift motions, Phil removed the majority of Dan's clothing, practically ripping his damn shirt off before Dan did the same thing to him, both snatching kisses in between.  
  
"I warn you now," Dan said, a little breathily, as Phil stood there in just his boxers, before Dan pulled him closer and slid his fingers underneath the waistband, "This isn't going to last very long."  
  
"Not on my end, either." Phil gasped out, before Dan slid his fingers down Phil's pants and gently grasped his cock, squeezing gently before kissing Phil again, silencing the moan that was about to come out of Phil's mouth. "Fuck, Dan."  
  
"I'm going to suck you off ‘till you forget your own name." Dan muttered in Phil ear, before gently sucking Phil's collarbone, giving him a moment to respond, but the low moan was all that was needed before Dan moved forward.  
  
Gently, he slid down Phil's boxers until he was stood in his room, stepping out of his underwear, his cock flushed red, and leaking.  
  
Dan sat down on the bed and pulled Phil the short distance towards him by the hips, before gently pumping his fist up and down Phil's length to prepare him a little for the pace he was going to go at, using precome as natural lube.  
  
Amazingly, Phil couldn't even formulate a response to this, and could only lean forward to tangle his fingers in Dan's hair, his heavy breathing proving just how turned on he really was.  
  
Now, Dan knew he was good at this - really fucking good, to excuse the bad pun - and he was more than excited to watch Phil practically fall apart under his mouth, already hard at the thought of Phil's head thrown back, making sinful noises in a moment of total ecstasy.  
  
Slowly, trying to make sure this lasted a _little_ bit longer than a few minutes, Dan took the head of Phil's cock in his mouth, sucking gently and feeling the wetness of precum on his tongue, swirling it a little to get a feel for Phil before preparing to move downwards. Then, listening to Phil's tiny breath-y keening noises as he went (and trying not to moan in response) Dan moved his mouth down Phil's cock, the smooth, hot skin burning and stretching his lips, soon reaching the base and pausing, mainly for more adjustment on Phil's part.  
  
It was fucking incredible.  
  
Phil was trying so hard to keep himself under control as he forced his hips not to buck into Dan's mouth; the way his fingers were twisted so hard into Dan's hair being an indicator of how far gone he was, and how ready he was to just let everything go.

Every move Dan made was making Phil bite his lip and suppress a whine, Dan’s hot mouth moving up and down in a steady rhythm and preparing to push him over the edge. Before it became too much to bear, Phil had to push Dan away, despite every bone in his body screaming not to, and sat down next to him on the bed, his own hand wandering to Dan’s crotch.

“Want to fuck you.” Phil said, although it came out as a question, his eyes waiting for Dan’s response before he moved forward with anything. A hard swallow on Dan’s part was the first thing he noticed, drawing his attention to Dan’s sinfully perfect neck, making him itch to mark it, but he forced himself to concentrate.

“God, yes.” Dan replied, swallowing again and knotting his fingers into Phil’s hair, “You’ll have to open me up properly, it’s been a while.”

“I’d love to.” Phil half-joked, before kissing Dan again, intoxicated by his presence, and almost dying to fuck him. Slowly, his hands inched back down to Dan’s boxers, sliding a finger under the waistband questioningly, before allowing Dan to slide them off himself, his body visibly responding to seeing Dan’s cock as it was freed of clothing restraints. “Flip over, it’s easier that way.”

As Dan got comfortable, propping himself up on a pillow, Phil grabbed some lube out the bathroom cabinet next door, and cracked open the bottle to squirt some onto his hands. Letting the slippery gel warm a little under his touch, he couldn’t help but bite his lip again when he saw Dan’s ass, ready to be prepped on his bed, and practically calling out to be fucked.

“Christ.” He managed to say, under his breath, before he slid onto the bed behind Dan.

“Is my ass really that good?” Dan joked, but he was clearly a little nervous, perhaps as it had been so long, and he was kind of awkwardly presenting himself for Phil.

“It might be a bit cold, yeah? Let me know if you want to stop at any point.” Ignoring Dan’s joke for the most part, as part of his desperate mission to begin undoing him, Phil allowed himself the small warning before moving forward.

Rubbing his fingers against Dan’s entrance, trying to dissipate the cold a little, Phil gently pushed one finger into Dan’s ass, allowing it to be taken to the second knuckle before he paused, allowing Dan to adjust before he continued.

However - what he wasn’t prepared for - was the filthiest moan he’d ever heard, leaving Dan’s mouth in a moment of simultaneous joy and surprise. It took a few seconds for them both to process what had just happened, by which time Phil was significantly more eager.

“You good?” He asked, a little weakly, feeling Dan clench and loosen around him, and finally feeling him relax for good, acknowledging Dan’s muffled consent as he pushed his face into the pillow a little, and pushed back against Phil’s finger.

Gently, Phil opened Dan up, stretching carefully and tantalisingly slowly, causing moans and groans from Dan’s muffled mouth, until eventually Dan waved his hand in defeat, catching Phil’s attention.

“You’re killing me up here, can you please just fuck me?” His voice was forced, trying to cover the desperation in his voice and failing, especially when the voice was combined with his obviously flushed, pink skin.

Phil chuckled, and moved further up the bed, not stopping where Dan thought he would, but instead continuing to gently kiss Dan, before hovering a little.

“I’ve waited for this for about three months.” Phil's (clean) thumb smoothed over Dan's cheek, noting the glitter remnants from Louise's earlier fiasco. He was so beautiful. "I've thought about this _way_ more than can possibly be healthy. It's going to be..."  
  
He tailed off, because he was too distracted taking in Dan's lustful expression, his eyes gasping with longing.  
  
"Amazing. It's going to be amazing, if you'll let me."  
  
"Of course." Dan sounded hoarse, and quickly closed the gap between them to kiss again, revelling in how soft Phil's lips were, despite the circumstances. "Now hurry up, Monsieur Amour."  
  
"Ooh, French?" Phil leant back again, grinning, trailing a fingernail down Dan's skin and watching the goosebumps erupt. "Sounds good on you."  
  
"Oh, shut up." Dan wriggled back into position a little - he had turned his torso to have the conversation - and clenching his fingers around the bedsheets in anticipation; Phil was now rolling on the condom, slicking himself with a decent amount of lube, and was about to position himself.  
  
This was it.  
  
"Ready?" Phil asked, suddenly seeming a little nervous, but Dan nodded firmly, not mocking the number of times Phil had double checked with him at all, but instead closed his eyes in preparation, his vacant orifice remaining undoubtedly prepared.  
  
Slowly, Phil pushed the tip of his cock into Dan, feeling the hot, wet heat, and forcing himself to pause. After a few seconds of adjustment on Dan's part, he started to push back a little, encouraging Phil to press on.  
  
And so he did.  
  
Slowly, carefully, they slotted together like long-lost puzzle pieces, reunited by lust and fate. By the time Phil had gone all the way in, he could no longer tell you the day of the week it was, what year they were in, or what the main actress for the hit TV series 'Buffy' was called. It could have been ten seconds, a minute, half an hour- they were both lost in the sensation, either of filling someone or being full.  
  
"Phil." Dan half-whispered, half-whimpered, his arse grinding ever so slightly against Phil.  
  
At that, Phil remembered his duty in this position, and gently pulled out again, dragging out the process for the first few times before he knew for sure that Dan was ready.  
  
Then, he began to speed up- marginally at first, but after a few minutes, they were moving so fast that any wrong move could have floored them.  
  
And it did.  
  
Phil slipped out for a second, and suddenly he was lying on top of Dan, totally breathless, and totally unintentionally, his dick pressed against the cleft between Dan's buttcheeks, and it was all he could do to stop rutting against him, in order to try and reposition themselves.  
  
"Sorry." He half-gasped out, before letting out a giggle at Dan's pained noise. Scrambling back up a little too hurriedly, he paused a moment before he restarted, "Do you, uh, want to turn over?"  
  
Dan contemplated for a moment, before carefully shuffling round - kicking Phil in the hip in the process, but in doing so narrowly missed his dick, so for that they were grateful. As they reshuffled, Phil couldn't help at stare at Dan beneath him, lost in the way his body moved beneath him and how it lived so effortlessly beautifully.  
  
"Er, Phil?" Dan was grinning, a little dorkily, and it was obvious that he had said something to Phil before, but he was just lost in the moment. Idiot.  
  
"Yeah, sorry, I-" Phil couldn't help but grin back, casting his eyes downwards, a little embarrassed, but he repositioned himself, and looked back up at Dan, waiting for the confirming nod.  
  
As Dan nodded, Phil pushed back in, the hot slippery mess just as orgasm-inducing as before, except now he got to see Dan's facial expressions.  
  
And Christ was that worth it.  
  
Dan's expressions on their own were almost orgasmic, without all the extra moaning, which Dan knew was driving Phil crazy, so he did it even more.  
  
"My neighbours-" Phil gasped out, as the sound of skin slapping skin was becoming unbearable, and Dan let out a particularly loud, "Fuck, _yes_ ".  
  
"Your neighbours-" Dan let out a half-moan, half-splutter as Phil hit his G-spot, "Will be pleased you're finally having a good time."  
  
"Fuck off." Phil replied, half-heartedly, as he gasped out a few more swear words in Dan's general direction, the tension mounting and Phil's restraint loosening. His fingers found Dan's cock, stroking gently as he felt the lube on his fingers tease Dan to the end of his tether.  
  
Dan barely managed a word of warning before he was coming all over Phil's hand and his own stomach, crying out 'Oh _fuck_ ' in the filthiest voice Phil had ever heard, even in the tackiest of porn movies.  
  
Whilst Dan recovered from the orgasm, Phil gently thrusting a little to ride him through it, he knew that he wasn't going to last much longer. Gently, he pulled out of Dan, using his fist - and Dan's come - to try and push himself over that last, beautiful edge.  
  
"Fuck Dan, I'm gonna-"  
  
"Come in my mouth." Dan suddenly commanded, leaning forward out of his haze, and prying Phil's hands off his cock long enough to take the condom off, and then waiting for the signal. After Phil began stroking again, Dan could see he was getting close, and didn't want to wait much longer, but held out.  
  
Phil reached orgasm a few seconds later, which Dan realised instantly by the odd jerk of his hips. Dan pulled Phil's hands off his cock just as the come began to spill, and sucked at the tip mercilessly, fondling Phil's balls as he did so and relishing in the wince-inducing tugs he was receiving on his hair, and the painful, lustful gasps that were falling sinfully from Phil's open lips.  
  
"Fuck, fuck, fuck, _Dan_." Phil said, and made the mistake of looking down, watching Dan take his cock to the base in a moment of weakness, feeling it at the back of his throat, and swallowing every drop of cum in Phil's softening cock; the overstimulation was driving him crazy, but neither of them wanted this to end.  
  
"Christ, I-" Phil didn't even have words, as Dan removed himself slowly, gently pumping Phil's cock a few times before sitting back on his knees, his stomach still covered in come and his eyes shining bright.  
  
"Did you like that, Daddy?" Dan said, teasingly, his body still slumped in a submissive pose, and Phil fucking _knew_ he should never have told Dan that. By Dan's expression, Phil knew Dan was thinking the exact same thing.  
  
"Fuck the hell off, you SWORE." Phil whined, leaning down onto the bed and collapsing horizontally, not bothering to clean himself up, but reaching over for some tissues for Dan.  
  
"That was before this happened, though." He replied, mockingly, but his eyes were still laced with lust, and Phil almost couldn't take the teasing seriously. "At least I didn't say it during. Although I could. If you want."  
  
"God, don't say that." Phil groaned, leaning forward weakly to try and smear some of the come off Dan's stomach, "That actually sounds like you mean it."  
  
There was a short pause.  
  
"I do."  
  
Stopping what he was doing for a moment, Phil looked Dan in the eye.  
  
His sheepish, guilty-as-fuck eye.  
  
"Daniel Howell, you piece of shit." Phil breathed, as he realised what Dan was saying, throwing the tissue to the side dramatically. "So ALL the 'Daddy' jokes, all the constant teasing and jibing and mocking, and you fucking too?"  
  
"I couldn't exactly tell you!" Dan's arms were up in defence, but his soft expression did show that he felt a little guilty. "‘Hey, you have an outrageously inappropriate Daddy kink? No shit, samesies!’"  
  
"I hate you." Leaning over, Phil kissed Dan, waiting for his defensive arms to lower before he pounced, pushing Dan onto his back, and sliding into a place where he could attach some hickeys.

After sucking at a few soft spots, listening to Dan’s gentle moans get sleepier, Phil gave Dan one more kiss before sliding back onto the bed, wrestling the covers from where they’d been hastily flung to the side, and throwing it over the top of them. Soft blanket rubbed against their hot, flushed skin, cooling them before wrapping them in warmth again, gentle and caring.

As they lay there, their heartbeats slowing, Dan leant to trace Phil’s tattoo, which was resting in front of him, but tucked the wrong way. The little Pokemon all wore perfect fighting expressions, and Dan couldn’t help but wonder if they were a response to all the battles that Phil had to fight with his bastard ex-boyfriend.

“You’re so lovely.” Dan murmured out, as their stuttering breaths faded into compatibility, and the weak light illuminated the fondness in their eyes.

“As are you.” Phil replied, equally softly, still feeling a little high, but feeling totally at home in Dan’s arms, and vica versa.

Heartbeats pumped similarly for a few minutes before synchronising, and the darkness of the night finally sucked them into the warm cocoon of warmth and safety, their love unconsciously battling any of the metaphorical moon demons ready to take their uncertain souls, keeping the darkness at bay.

\--

Light crept in the corners of Dan's eyes, peeling his lids open with a few gentle fingers, and  
prodding his pupils carefully. Before Dan even really had a chance to register the light, he could feel things that he knew he wouldn't be feeling if he was in his bed at home, alone.  
  
For starters, the duvet was a different texture; the softness of the fabric was a contrast to the rough crinkle he had at home, and the pillow behind his head was a lot bigger than the one he was used to, which might explain the low-key pain in his neck.  
  
And the air was warmer - he couldn't hear the sounds of plates clinking downstairs, or the rumble of the boiler in the bathroom as someone took a shower; the only sounds he could register was of a dog barking faintly in the distance, and the generic shuffle of London traffic.  
  
Also, there was someone else sleeping next to him, which was pretty new. With their arm thrown around his waist, and their head buried in Dan's shoulder.  
  
Okay, this was really, _really_ new.  
  
As Dan's eyes finally adjusted to the light in the room - they'd obviously forgotten to shut the curtains last night - he could see the mop of black hair tucked under his chin, and feel the shifting as Phil breathed.  
  
He couldn't help but want this moment to last forever.  
  
But what would happen when Phil woke up? - would they awkwardly discuss it? Would they pretend nothing happened?  
  
Maybe this was just a drunken mistake.

They'd both had a few drinks the night before, definitely, but they were both sober on their walk by the Thames. For sure. In the moment, Phil's skin was hot against his, the sheer amount of contact between them making Dan a little giddy, but it was also adding to the panic and paranoia in his mind.  
  
At that thought, Phil shuffled a little beside him, and Dan froze in an instant of uncertainty.  
  
The black mop of hair moved a little, and pulled back from Dan, the stiffness of Dan's limbs being clear evidence that he was awake, which was the polar opposite of what he wanted to be right then.  
  
As Phil moved lethargically out of Dan's personal space, Dan couldn't help but blurt out the first thing that came to mind.  
  
"I'm sorry."  
  
Phil hadn't even made eye contact with him yet, but now his shocked blue eyes snapped up to Dan's, as he wriggled into a more comfortable position, the small smile on his face slowly fading as he stared at Dan's expression.  
  
"Uh, for what?" His voice was an attempt to sound neutral, despite its early morning gruffness, but neither of them could miss the fearful undertone, even though it was being actively suppressed.  
  
"Erm," Dan twisted his thumbs a little, bringing his hands up under his chin so that he could play with them, "For last night. I'm sorry. It was a mistake."  
  
There was a short silence.  
  
"If you want, we can just forget about it." Dan babbled, his fingers twisting more and more violently around one another, his voice getting higher as he continued, willing himself to stop, but not entirely sure how, "I mean, at least we don't have to see each other every day anymore, right?"  
  
After another pause, Phil spoke again, his eyes firmly resting on the duvet in front of him, rather than on Dan.  
  
"Is that what you want?"  
  
Gulping, Dan recognised the loaded question, but the response Phil gave had scrounged a little hope in his chest, and the little voice in the back of his head was telling him to _just say no_. This was the same voice that told him to drop out of university, to take the part in a brand new play on the West End, to kiss Phil.  
  
Maybe the little voice knew what it was doing.  
  
"No."  
  
It looked like all the breath left Phil's body in that moment, his eyes sliding shut, and his hands coming up to push the heels into his eyes, his brow furrowed.  
  
"Don't fucking _do_ that." He mumbled, and the tone of his voice frightened Dan a little. He'd never heard Phil sound remotely angry, and it sounded so, so wrong coming out his mouth.  
  
"I- sorry. I thought, you might not- y'know. I didn't want you to feel bad." Dan managed to stumble out the broken sentence, but it didn't make him feel any better.  
  
His heart still hammering a little in his chest, he reached out shakily to take one of Phil's hands off his eyes, doing it gently enough that Phil allowed him. Slowly, he brought the hand back down onto the bed sheet, and tucked his fingers in the spaces available, finally allowing himself to marvel at how well they fit together.  
  
When Phil finally acknowledged what Dan had done, he removed the other hand and turned onto his side so that he was facing Dan. His faintly pink eyes left very little to the imagination, even though his eyes were downcast, and all Dan could feel were stabs of guilt, regret, and guilt again.  
  
"I'm so sorry." Dan mumbled, eventually, when Phil's eyes slid shut, rubbing his thumb over Phil's knuckles, and letting the guilt burn in his stomach.  
  
"No, I overreacted." Phil muttered back, but his voice was still a little apprehensive. "Though that was still a pretty dickish move, Howell."  
  
"I'm sorry."  
  
The silence settled over them for a moment, and Dan couldn't help but feel they were walking on eggshells right now.  
  
"Do you want breakfast?" Dan asked, quietly, unsure as to whether he should leave, but Phil's grip on his arm gave him a slight hint. "Not to blow my own trumpet, but I'm pretty good at pancakes."  
  
Slowly, Phil nodded, and began to detangle himself from Dan once more, the mood having changed significantly in the past five minutes. They both made their way to the tiny white and fake-mahogany kitchen, but just as Phil started to pull out pots and pans, Dan took a hold of his wrist (noting the small flinch and hating himself even more as he pulled Phil gently round to face him).  
  
"I'm really am so sorry." He said, letting his eyes connect with Phil's as his other hand slid cautiously around Phil's waist, trying desperately to communicate all his guilt through one look. From the expression on Phil's face and the way he was leaning into Dan, it was working.  
  
The darker haired of the two took a small breath in, and averted his gaze slightly so that he was staring at a freckle on Dan's cheek rather than his eyes, his arms looped carefully over Dan's hips, starting to speak quietly.  
  
"My last boyfriend- he, uh, wasn't a very nice guy." Sensing alarm in Dan's aura, Phil quickly corrected, "He never hit me! God no, nothing like that, but he was just an arsehole in general, really. He made me feel really shitty all the time, and would manipulate me and force me into awful situations, hanging out with some seriously fucked up people."  
  
There was a short pause, but Dan decided not to say anything.  
  
Sometimes, stories weren't told to be replied to; sometimes they were just told so they could be heard.  
  
"Basically, it took a year and a half to get out of it. We would argue constantly, screaming at each other over the most pointless things. He- he threw a Playstation controller at me once, he got so frustrated. Caught me just above the eye. He'd been yelling that my career was worthless, and I needed a proper job, and to stop pissing about with make-up and stuck-up actors, and I needed to gain some "real" self-respect. He said he'd made a mistake falling in love with me. He apologised a million times, but it was kind of the last straw. I had to call Louise to come and get me.  
  
"It was only really after we stopped seeing each other that I realised how negative he was about everything I did. I'd stopped seeing my friends, seeing my family, watching the tv shows I used to love. Louise asked if I wanted to watch Buffy that night I called her and I realised I hadn't watched an episode in months.  
  
"He texted me constantly, saying he still loved me, and he felt like he wanted to die without me. Threatened it a few times, actually. I don't think I knew what a hard decision was until I got a text from him saying it was over, and that he was going to kill himself. I was almost certain that he wouldn't, but I knew I'd never live with myself if I was wrong.  
  
"I'm not-" Phil paused, sighing a little as he thought about how to phrase his next sentence, the warm air gently hitting Dan's face. "I'm not looking for pity." He ended up saying, firmly, "I just think that if we're gonna - y'know - then you needed to know some things. And know what not to say, basically."  
  
Dan nodded, and moved a hand so that he could trace Phil's jawline with his finger, hoping that it came off as comforting, and not dismissive.

“So, TLDR, I’m a bit freaky about relationships, and need constant assurance that you don’t secretly hate me.” Phil summarised, eventually, and shuffled his gaze back over to Dan, his expression slightly nervous. “Does that sound okay?”

“It’ll make two of us.” Dan replied, smiling, unsure how else to respond, “We can be insecure and needy together.”

“I never said anything about needy.” Phil said, instantly, and the atmosphere clicked back into something that felt a bit more normal. “That’s all you, nerd.”

Dan grinned, unable to stop a laugh, before untangling himself from Phil, who was also smiling, although still looking a tad uncertain.

“So, pancakes?” Dan offered, hoping that this would be the peace offering that would slide everything back into place. As Phil nodded, and switched back to finding the frying pan, the pair felt like they could finally relax a little bit.

And in that kitchen, with it’s tiny walkway with cupboards lining both walls, the tacky dark brown balancing out the linoleum flooring, and the picture of Louise, Phil and Darcy stuck on the fridge; they became something real.

-

“Ugh. Pancake overload.” Phil moaned, flopping back on the sofa and ignoring the stack of dirty plates on the table, and instead picking up the remote and pressing the smooth rubber ON button. “Does Friends sound okay?”

“Yep.” Dan stretched out on the sofa, clothed in a new shirt of Phil’s after a minor pancake incident. “I warned you I was good at pancakes. You didn’t listen.”

“I know, I know, Bad Phil.” Phil found the right channel and dropped the remote unceremoniously back onto the sofa. “Do you want a painkiller?”

“For the pancakes? Christ, how many did you eat?” Dan joked, despite knowing that this was a reference to Phil's faint hangover, “Nah, I’m alright. How much did you have to drink?”

“Very little.” Phil muted the adverts whilst he got up and rummaged around the shelves to the right of the TV. “I can drink practically nothing and still have a headache. Never get sick, though, so I guess that’s something.”

“‘Kay, that’s pretty impressive. Probably worth the headache, yeah?”

“Definitely.” Phil found the painkillers, popping two out and heading back to the sofa, sitting a lot closer to Dan than previously, choosing instead to sneak a kiss out of the brunette, grinning as he did so. “And this is worth the three month build up.”

“It wasn’t three months, don’t exaggerate.” Dan jokingly chastised, but pecked Phil on the lips in return, their smiles slotting together like half-moon puzzle pieces. “Maybe, like, two months.”

“Two and a half.”

“Deal.”

From there, the pair were lost in a melée of kisses, starting at the lips and working their way all over the face. Before long, they were lying lengthways on the sofa, Phil on top of Dan, his hands lingering under the borrowed shirt, and his crotch sinfully close. The fake-leather was slightly slippery underneath them, but they were somehow maintaining a solid enough grip that it didn’t seem to matter.

Until, however, Phil ventured to Dan’s neck.

“Now then, in terms of your neck; I know it’s sensitive, but I have a deal to make with you.”

“Literally, just do it.” Dan had his neck curved back anyway from an underhand jawline kiss, and the way his fingers were gripping Phil’s hips hinted that the desperation in his tone was not faked.

“Lit-rally.” Phil mocked, gently, before smiling at Dan’s groan, and letting his teeth nibble Dan’s skin, sucking at each mark before moving onto the next.

“Fuck off.” Dan mumbled, pressing his fingers even harder into the soft flesh, hard enough to hurt but not enough to bruise. “This is bullying.”

“Oh, _this_ is bullying?” Phil pulled back a little to ask, but immediately made another mark, cutting off the intended remark with Dan’s badly suppressed response.

Sliding a little on the sofa, it only took a few minutes for Dan to call for a ceasefire.

“We have a dinner this evening. With _other people_.” Finally managing to convince Phil to lean back, he quickly checked the disaster zone in the mirror on the wall. “Christ, Phil, my shirt isn't going to cover half of these!”

“That was the point.”

“I’m going to have to turn up in a fucking morphsuit to hide these.”

Giggled exploded from behind Dan as Phil pictured him in a morphsuit, his tongue hanging out adorably and his eyes scrunching together as he lolled on the sofa.

“We’re gonna have to do something else for the next couple of hours, else both of us are going to have to go in morphsuits.” Phil said, after he finally finished laughing, and convinced Dan to stop giving him ‘The Look’. “How about MarioKart?”

And with that, all problems were solved.

-

  
"You want a glass of wine?" Phil called through from the kitchen, as Dan lay sprawled on Phil's sofa, altering his Dan mii a little so that his height was a little more obvious. He also made sure to put himself in the 'star miis' category.  
  
"Sounds good." Dan called through, confidently ignoring the fact that it was literally three in the afternoon, his fingers nimbly flicking through the WiiU menu. "More MarioKart?"  
  
A groan could be heard from the kitchen, accompanied by the clinking of glasses and the glugging of wine.  
  
"It's no fun when you just thrash me."  
  
"It's fun for me." Dan muttered, dropping the controller on his stomach instead of clicking on anything, but accepting that they'd probably had enough MarioKart for the day.  
  
"I heard that." Phil called back, a few seconds before he reentered the room, holding two glasses of wine, "The walls are thinner than you think. Budge up."  
  
Reluctantly, Dan pulled his legs up so that Phil could sit down, taking his wine from Phil and trying not to spill it all over himself. His whole body still ached a little bit from last night, but since he was swaddled in Phil's trackies and jumper, he felt a million times comfier.  
  
"We've got to get ready for the dinner in a couple of hours." Phil reminded Dan, taking a sip of his wine, and pulling his feet up so that his knees were tucked under his chin, and he was now facing Dan instead of the tv.

"Ugh, don't remind me." Dan fake-groaned, but they both knew he didn't actually mind going out to the dinner itself, it was just that he'd have to leave the haven of Phil's apartment. And Phil.  
  
"It'll be fun," Phil replied, but his voice sounded a little far-away, his eyes roaming all over Dan's face - almost in awe that he was allowed to stare like this. The softness of his skin was tantalising, and Phil was almost proud to remember that he'd sucked a few hickies into the delicate skin around Dan's neck earlier that day.  
  
Something shiny caught his eye in that moment, however, and his eyes landed on the shelf in the corner of the room, allowing a small grin to spread over his face as he registered it.  
  
"Hey, remember you said a few weeks ago that I'd need to get a few drinks in you before you let me paint your nails?"  
  
The surprised look on Dan's face told him everything he needed to know, and he instantly leaped up to go and get the tub of nail varnishes, hauling it over before Dan even had the thought to complain.  
  
"Are you serious?" Dan managed to get out, finally, as Phil rummaged through the pot to find the black, his actions answering Dan’s question already.  
  
"Do you want black or charcoal grey?" Phil asked, ignoring Dan's question, and pulling out the two colours in question, holding them out for Dan to see.  
  
Slowly putting down his wine, and fighting the smile that was threatening to spread across his face, Dan surveyed the two.  
  
"I think the black one's more dramatic. Plus, my suit's black, for later, so it'll match that."  
  
"Good choice." Phil said, fake-solemnly, before grinning and shuffling closer, unscrewing the bottle lid with vigour and waiting for Dan to put his wine down and prepare his hands for painting. He did so, a little uncertainly, and let a little smile stretch over his cheeks, a dimple shyly appearing.  
  
"I love these." Phil said, suddenly, and poking a spare finger into Dan's dimple, without thinking about what he was doing, the nail polish left to balance precariously on his knee. Dan instantly reached out his hand to grab the nail polish, practically yelling a “Woah-!” as it began to lean dangerously off to the side, and gave Phil an ‘are you serious’ look, as Phil withdrew his finger again sheepishly.

“I mean, I’m glad-” Dan began, his grin turning into a small laugh, gently rebalancing the bottle again, “But seriously. How is this sofa not covered in stains?”

“It is.” Phil replied, holding the bottle again and tugging carefully on one of Dan’s hands so that he splayed his fingers again, “You just can’t see them. Ready?”

“Uh, yep.” Nodding and waiting for the brush to touch his fingernail, Dan couldn’t help but notice how weird the sensation of somebody else holding his finger was. And just generally the feeling of nail polish being put on. “This is weird.”

“Good weird?” Phil paused after the first nail, turning the brush so that it was on the opposite side for the next nail and checking Dan’s facial expression.

“Yeah, good weird.” Dan grinned, watching the precision with which Phil applied the next spread of polish, and loving it a little too much when he used his finger to rub away a bit that went over the edge. “Christ, it makes my fingers look really pale.”

Phil hummed his agreement, but was actually trying not to imagine Dan opening him up with these fingers, and he figured not saying anything at all was the best way to hide this. Gently painting each nail before he moved onto the next, Phil lost himself a little in the therapeutic-ness of it all.

When he finished the first layer, he leant back and observed his work, quite pleased with how it turned out despite the fact that it was fairly simple. It wasn’t often that he had to concentrate this hard on such a simple task, but he was so worried that it wouldn’t be perfect for Dan.

But it pretty much was.

“Coolio.” Dan was grinning, and wafted his fingers about a bit to dry them a bit, “How often do your friends take advantage of this talent?”

“Literally never.” Phil smiled at Dan’s apparent delight with his newly decorated hands, “You’re such a nerd.”

“Yeah, but I’m your nerd,” Dan joked, happily acknowledging how cheesy this joke was, and not really caring at all. “Ah, these look so cool, though.”

“Next time, we’ll put some diamonté’s on ‘em.” Carefully packing away the nail polishes into the shiny tub, Phil was secretly really pleased with Dan’s reaction. It was true that no one really talked about Phil’s make up skills, apart from maybe the odd discussion with Louise about new products coming out, and Phil had a feeling that Dan knew this.

Instead of putting the tub back on the shelf, Phil simply left it by their feet on the floor, and leant back onto the sofa again, his eyes happy and his body language relaxed. When Dan leant forward to gently kiss him, Phil reciprocated softly, their smiles merging as they became one, their relationship slowly stumbling into a domestic bliss that neither of them had experienced in a very long time.

\--

“Two caramel macchiatos, please.” Phil ordered, leaving Dan to lean against the Starbucks counter and survey the people around them. It wasn’t the same Starbucks as last time, but it had a similar setup (as they all do), and it was making Dan weirdly nostalgic.

It had been two weeks since the ‘Last Supper’, and both of them had taken these two weeks off completely, and as a result had spent enough time together to constitute at least a two month relationship. It was weirdly intense - and it was much faster than what Dan had done with Annabelle - but they both felt like they’d been together forever; it didn’t even feel like they’d only met three months ago - it genuinely felt as if they’d known each other their whole lives.

The clatter of the cups and the chatter of the barista didn’t register in Dan’s brain, her voice being resolutely ignored, even when she flirted with Phil, which was also resolutely ignored. Their orders were placed, their names taken, and they were shunted down to the other end of the barista bar. Taking Dan’s hand, Phil began to rub his thumb over the back of Dan’s hand as he spoke about nothing, and Dan revelled in the sound of his voice, barely understanding the story but enjoying hearing the words all the same.

Dan felt the loss as Phil removed his hand to get his drink, and he had to suppress a small whine when he registered the sensation. However, it was soon replaced with the feeling of a warm cup, as they both seated themselves by the foggy window and intertwined their ankles.

Whilst they began with scattered chat, they soon tailed off into quiet, and started to people-watch instead. Rubbing little windows of clearness into their foggy pane, they made the occasional comment, but mainly settled into soft conversation and comfortable silence; watching the world go by in their little personal bubble confirmed the concrete nature of their relationship, the intensity of the comfort they felt seeming like a personal moment too intimate for others to intrude.  

This was the total opposite of their nights, where they stayed wrapped in each other’s arms and told each other every thought running through their minds; that was intimacy in almost every sense of the word - physical, emotional, cognitive. But this was an intimacy only reached after all those other things had happened: they reached a level of comfort where they were so relaxed in each others company that they didn’t mind spending some of that time in silence.

And it was really kind of perfect.

\--

There was mist in the air and it was still fairly chilly, but it was now March, and Dan and Phil were embracing the semi-decent weather (in that it had rained for the past week and they were both starting to go slightly insane, despite the fact that they never normally left the house). In addition, Dan had started rehearsals for a short play in a small theatre in London, so they had missed each other’s company significantly over the past few weeks. Phil had also had a follow up interview with the people at Les Mis, and they were going to take him on just before cast change, to get him used to the atmosphere before they switched everything and he would then be in charge of his own little section.

He started on the Wednesday matinée, and Dan was back to rehearsals on Monday. Today was Sunday, so they were trying to relax as much as they could.

“Do you think people at Les Mis will hate me?”

“No.” Dan said, firmly, before they could even dwell on the subject, “Not for a second.”

“Mm.” Phil didn’t sound convinced, and Dan wasn’t sure that he’d be able to quell Phil’s nerves completely, no matter what he said.

“Bring cake in the first day, or something. They’ll love you even more then.”

“Yeah, that might be an idea.”

That morning, Phil had done Dan’s make-up for him, edging eyeliner along his lid and gently curling out his lashes, combing his brows a little and styling his hair before kissing him passionately and falling in love with him that little bit more. Every few days, Dan would ask for Phil to do it for him, not particularly because he enjoyed the make-up, but more because he loved Phil’s delight in it. His face would light up (even when he tried to act casual), and his tongue would peek out the corner as he painted things onto Dan’s face, experimenting when he could and sticking to the basics when Dan had work. It was kind of magical to watch, and both of them got enjoyment out of it.

Also, Dan kind of loved people complimenting him on his make-up, not only because he felt he looked good, but also because then he could tell them that his boyfriend did it, and it meant he could talk about Phil for a little while.

People were already sick to death of it, but he didn't really care.  
  
“I can help make some, if you like?” Dan suggested, but then thought about the reality of it, and winced, “Okay, how about I’ll help you buy some?”  
  
Phil grinned, squeezing Dan's hand in his, and ducked his head a little.  
  
"Yeah, that'd be great. I don't know if the cast would really appreciate me poisoning them on their matinée performance."  
  
They settled into a quiet moment, still walking, their hands swinging gently, before Phil bounced back a question.  
  
"How far are you with rehearsals?"  
  
"Eh, pretty far. Maybe two thirds." Dan's fingers were freezing, but he couldn't bear the thought of untwining his hands from Phil's to put them in his pocket, "But those film people got back to me through Bertie. Said they want to see me, but only when the play's finished."  
  
"That's in May, right?"  
  
"Yeah, but they said they were willing to wait." A small smile crept onto Dan's face, almost disbelieving, "They said they were willing to wait, for _me_."  
  
"Of course they are!" Phil responded immediately, stopping their movement and turning to face Dan, practically swinging him round, before kissing him enthusiastically, smiling as he did so, matching Dan's curved lips perfectly. "It's going up and up, Dan. You'll be accepting an Academy award before you know it."  
  
"Haha, okay, BIG leap there." Dan replied, but kissed Phil back, repeatedly and briefly, before his grin made it too difficult. Suddenly, about 20 metres to Phil's left, someone put their phone down from where it had been positioned - they hadn't even seen him raise it - and power walked in the other direction. They both caught the guy doing it out of the corner of their eyes, but by the time they realised he had taken a picture of them, he was on the perimeter of the park, about to cross the road into London suburbia.  
  
"Did we-?"  
  
"I think so." Phil responded, unsure whether to be annoyed or amused, "Looks like you're more famous than you thought. Getting 'papped' in the park."  
  
"I really don't think that's what that was." Dan tried to protest, but he didn't sound massively sure. "Christ, was it?"  
  
"Either way, it's done now." Phil assured him, slipping their hands back together from where they'd fallen apart, his voice calming, but strong. His black coat contrasted amazingly with his pale skin, and Dan couldn't help but admire him, in a weird, Edward-Cullen-ish way. "Wanna head back?"  
  
"Yeah, sure." Dan followed the path curving to the right of the park, beginning the shallow incline reluctantly. "Uhh, do you think my make-up looked okay in that photo?"  
  
"Um, yes?" Pretending to be offended, Phil couldn't help but poke Dan's side in jest, "Hello? I did that make up - it’s perfect. Why would you say that?"  
  
"He got my bad side." Pouting, Dan couldn't keep up the façade, even for a few seconds, and laughed almost instantly; the crinkles at the side of his eyes appearing, softening the sharp eyeliner and framing his curled eyelashes a little.

Phil kissed him again, and Dan realised he really didn't give a shit about how he looked in the picture.

\--

“Spotify update? Uh, hang on, lemme just get my phone-”

As Dan rooted around in his pocket, he ignored the chat that was flooded with “OMG R U WITH PHIL?? #PHAN”, extracting the phone and unlocking it, checking his Spotify quickly and rattling off a bunch of new artists for people to check out.

As he was scrolling through the list and giving people a general idea of the genre of each artist, Phil came into the room and moved to sit down in the armchair installed by the window, putting Dan’s cup of tea on the coffee table and picking up his Macbook. Before he had a chance to sit down, however, Dan made a noise in the back of his throat, catching Phil’s attention, before motioning for him to sit beside Dan on the sofa.

“You sure?” He mouthed, still hovering above the armchair, but moving towards the sofa when Dan nodded, dragging his tea round the corner of the table and putting his Macbook on his knee.

Dan cleared his throat a little and turned back to the chat, which was now going more-than-slightly insane.

“Anyway, yes, sorry, Spotify. Next was Hayley Kiyoko, who a lot of you probably know-”

He managed to keep up the running commentary - moving onto the subject of his 750k Twitter followers goal, which was why they were having the liveshow in the first place - for about another ten minutes, before Phil started shaking beside him, and then suddenly couldn’t stop laughing.

“What?” Dan asked, when he couldn’t ignore it any longer, especially because their legs were touching and therefore Phil’s shaking was making the laptop on _his_ knee shake. He leant a little so that he could see Phil’s laptop screen and- “Oh, for God’s sake, Phil.”

It was a 4 second vine of parrot sashaying to Beyoncé, and it was looping and looping until Dan eventually had to laugh as well.

“Honestly,” He turned back to the laptop, “This guy. You ask him to entertain himself quietly so he goes on _vine_.”

“Well, _sorry_.” Phil said, collecting himself enough to respond for the moment, but still grinning. “I'll just sit here in silence and wikipedia the history of random foreign countries, shall I?”

He then leant into the Younow shot for a moment, pointing at Dan but looking at the webcam.

“That’s what _Dan_ does for fun, by the way. I just walk in and he’s halfway down the wikipedia page for the French Revolution.”

“Alright, shut up, that was _one time_.” Dan deliberately moved the laptop so that Phil wasn’t in the shot anymore, which resulted in Phil leaning further onto Dan to get back in shot, before Dan did it again, and they both ended up laughing so much that the Macbook slid off Dan’s lap and onto the sofa beside them. After pushing Phil off joke-forcefully, Dan pulled the laptop back up again, still giggling a little, but knowing that he had to get on with the liveshow.

“Sorry about that. See, normally he sits in the other chair to avoid this sort of disturbance-”

“Disturbance? Rude. My presence is a gift.”

“-Yes, disturbance. _Anyway_ \- What were we-? Oh, yeah, we were talking about Caitlyn Jenner. Okay, so yeah, I do agree that-”

Dan knew that the damage had already been done, with people going nuts in the chat, and he was barely able to contain his smile as a result. He didn’t want to have to do a really dramatic announcement online about being with Phil, but he hoped that if he hinted enough in his semi-regular liveshows (normally for Twitter goals or for announcements) then people would pick up on it, and he wouldn’t have to say anything outright. In the age of social media, people already knew that they hung out a lot, seeing them around together, and the continuous tweets and tumblr posts adding up. This led to a few weird paparazzi situations (that Dan didn't even know he was famous enough for), and a couple of magazines had called them out on it. Dan just hoped that if they didn't say anything, they’d kind of be left alone about it.

Only time would tell if this strategy would work.

And, by the looks of how crazy the chat had suddenly gone, Dan wasn’t feeling too hopeful.

One look at Phil, though, and he suddenly didn’t really seem to mind.

\--

  
"Hey, I'm just going to the loo, back in a minute." Phil said in Dan's ear, and unlatched himself from where he'd been glued to his side, kissing his cheek quickly and sliding out of the booth.  
  
At the time, Dan was deep in conversation with Alicia about a new art exhibition they were bringing to the Tate, and the potential trip to the Louvre she was thinking about taking in the summer.  
  
"I can practise my extremely rusty French on the cute French boys." She laughed, pretending to have been told off when Josh shot her a fake-wounded look, from where his conversation with Adam (back from America) had just tailed off. "And, of course, you can come over and scare them off with your very intimidating glare, babe."  
  
She kissed him quickly, grinning as soon as she returned to her conversation with Dan.  
  
["Il est un peu excessif, non?"](http://danielljameshowell.tumblr.com/french-translation-ww) Dan grinned, knowing that Alicia had taken French at A-Level, and had done a summer in Quebec, so could understand him perfectly.  
  
"Ouais, mais je l'aime quand même." Then, she leant in a bit secretively, "Je crois qu'il va me demander en mariage bientôt."  
  
"Vraiment?" Dan couldn't help but get excited; the idea of two of his best friends getting married was practically perfect. "C'est excitant! Je lui demanderai dans un moment - je serai subtil."  
  
"Good." She grinned back, ending their tangent of conversation very quickly. "Your French is a bit shit, mate."  
  
"Oh, shush." Dan couldn't help but laugh at her blunt comment, but knew that it was true. His French ended at GCSE, but he'd been on a trip to northern France with a friend after his dropout panic in a really crazy series of events that led to them accidentally staying for two months. He'd had to pick up the language pretty quickly, especially because they hadn't seen an end to the issue at the time, and didn't know when they were going to get back. As a result, he and Alicia used to speak in French a little (mainly to annoy Josh) but he hadn't really had the chance to keep it up since. "Just 'cause you're bloody fluent."  
  
"Well, not everyone can be as fabulous as me." She joked, fluttering her eyelashes and tossing her hair, but prodding Dan on the arm gently, "To be fair, you're not illiterate, are you?"  
  
"No, but I have the vocabulary range of a 7 year old." He pouted, before pointing at her empty glass, "You want a refill? I think it's my round."  
  
"Oh, yes please." She said, before tapping her boyfriend on the shoulder, and asking about their refills.  
  
"I'll come with you and help carry stuff." Josh said, as he was on the stool at the end, not meeting Dan's eye but moving towards the bar anyway.  
  
"'Kay, back in a minute, then." Dan tried not to know that something was wrong, but he couldn't help but know Josh almost inside-out, even though it had diminished over the past few months.  
  
As he reached the bar, he decided to start a friendly conversation, maybe let it slide into what was upsetting Josh, but before he could even open his mouth, Josh had spoken.  
  
"Mate, I'm not being funny with you, but we need to have a word."  
  
Alarmed at the serious tone, Dan nodded his consent, quickly ordering the next round and pushing some money over the bar before turning back to Josh, as the bartender filled the various glasses.  
  
"What's up?"  
  
Josh looked extremely pained, and Dan couldn't help but assume it had to do with Alicia.  
  
"Is this about you wanting to propose to Alicia?" Dan asked, quietly, after a moment of silence, where Josh had made no move to fill the gap.  
  
The expression on his face was enough to dispel Dan's theory instantaneously.  
  
"No, I, uh-" Josh shook his head, "No, that wasn't it."  
  
He took a deep breath, and Dan felt a weight in the pit of his stomach that said he wasn't going to like this conversation at all.  
  
"I just," He finally turned to face Dan properly, rather than the bar, and his eyes were full of the pain that only appears when someone's being brutally honest with you, and they almost can't bear to see your reaction, "I get it. I get it - you and Phil. Phil and you. Being a thing."  
  
"Okay?" Dan replied, as Josh was clearly waiting for an answer, "Are you coming out or something?"  
  
"No! No, no, fuck, no." He bit his lip, and rushed out his next sentence, so fast that Dan had to concentrate really hard to understand. "You just don't have to be so OBVIOUS about it."  
  
"Obvious about what?" Eyebrows quirked, even Dan's Cambridge-standard brain couldn't quite find a reason for this outburst.  
  
"The fact that you're a couple."  
  
"What-" Dan blinked a few times, and felt a heavy weight in his stomach, hoping to God that Josh wasn't going to do what he was about to do. "What do you mean?"  
  
"Do you have to do all the touching and-" Josh stumbled a bit here, "And all that shit?"  
  
"You mean when my boyfriend kissed me on the cheek two minutes ago?" Disbelieving, Dan paid the bartender for their drinks quickly, trying to ignore the fact that the people around them were starting to listen in.  
  
"It's not me!" Josh said, hurriedly, when he realised Dan had caught his drift, "I just worry about other people."  
  
Trying desperately not to smack his head on the bar, Dan put on his most intimidating glare and stared Josh the fuck down for a few seconds before he spoke again. The lighting in the place wasn't dim, but it definitely had a more atmospheric feel than was necessary, and Dan couldn't help but sink into the melodrama.  
  
"I don't give a shit about other people." The silence hovered in the air for a few moments, whilst the unsaid second half of the sentence played out in Josh's mind. Dan's voice was stable, but Josh had known him long enough that he knew Dan was way past stable.  
  
"Dan, I-"  
  
"Look, it's fine. You're uncomfortable." Dan had snapped into the role where he seemed like an ethereal overlord, his voice calm and soothing, like a charming dictator. The pure ice in his eyes was enough to confirm this. "I can understand that. How about-" He pretended to think it over, "Okay, how about Phil and I leave, so you can feel a little more at ease, and you guys can drink our extra drinks we just paid for, and then you'll be able to feel everybody's judgemental stares less?"  
  
Josh's jaw was clenched, the muscles in his neck practically pulsing.  
  
"Dan, you're being dramatic-"  
  
"Oh, I'm being dramatic?" Dan kept his voice on it's calm level, hoping that his stupidly composed presence would irk Josh more. It seemed to be working. "You just told me you feel uncomfortable because my boyfriend kissed me on the cheek."  
  
"No, you're twisting my words-" Josh was seriously starting to get angry now, and Dan really didn't give a shit that he was winding him up further. " _I'm_ not uncomfortable. I'm worried _other_ people might be uncomfortable."  
  
"You're projecting your emotions onto other people, Joshua." Dan knew he hated his full name, and that was exactly why he used it, "That's your magical excuse for being an absolute dickhead."  
  
He saw Phil coming out of the bathroom, and caught his eye, signalling him over. Josh saw this, and knew instinctively that Dan was about to leave. In desperation, he grabbed a hold of Dan's arm, trying to stop him from moving, and only causing more anger.  
  
"Dan, please, you're overreacting-"  
  
"Yep. Sure. Overreacting." Dan reached out for Phil's hand as he came close, and the expression on Dan's face was enough for Phil to know to keep his mouth shut. "My best friend is uncomfortable with my relationship because it's with a guy."  
  
Grip on Dan's hand tightening slightly, Phil turned to look at Josh with his mouth slightly agape, but his expression was non-judging, for now.  
  
"I'm going to go." Dan said, and Phil felt his hand shaking slightly, and knew that Dan was probably going to start crying in a minute. Unfortunately, being Dan's best friend for years meant that Josh also knew this. "Have a nice night, asshole."  
  
They barely made it to the door - Dan was resolutely ignoring everyone's stares, before they finally spilled out of the door and onto the pavement. Sunshine was still clinging to the clouds, the June weather being kind, and the sound of laughter and clinking glasses filling the air.  
  
Dan couldn't keep it in much longer, and turned into Phil's chest almost as soon as they found a quieter spot, and took deep, rattling breaths.  
  
"Shh," Phil stroked Dan's hair gently, trying to forget the similar levels of stress they'd had a few weeks before, in the penultimate week before Dan told his parents. "Shh, it's okay."  
  
At this point, Dan was only trying to hold himself together, so that he didn't have to go home with red eyes and blotchy skin, but they both knew that he would unravel over this later, probably staying up until all hours of the morning trying to reconcile himself. Carefully clenched, Dan's fists were wound tight into Phil's t-shirt, the grip slowly lessening as time passed, and the tension in his shoulders reducing.  
  
"He's my best friend." Dan mumbled into Phil's chest, taking another deep breath as he did so, "Best friend."  
  
"I know." Phil let his arms loosen around Dan as he began to stroke his hand up and down his back. Slowly, Dan relaxed, and pulled back a little shakily, but his expression was determined. "Shall we get going?"  
  
Nodding resolutely, Dan slid his hand into Phil's and they made their way to the nearest tube stop, following the busy road and ignoring the persistently cheerful sun and the relentlessly happy surroundings. People flitted around them - in and out and round and round until they both felt dizzy - but they managed to drag themselves home all the same, sliding through the door with ease and melting into the soft space they called home.

-

  
"It's Josh." Dan watched the phone screen light up in despair, but he knew that he had to answer it. If he didn't, the phone calls wouldn't end until he gave in; Josh had no sense of tact.  
  
Gently, Phil his hand out of Dan's, so that he could answer the phone, giving him an encouraging nod when he looked at him, before pausing the episode of television they happened to be watching to try and get Dan's mind off of it. The sepia characters on screen froze in varied states of pain and suffering, and Dan couldn't help but want to swap places with them as he picked up the phone and gently swiped the screen, taking a deep breath before he answered it.  
  
"Hello?"  
  
"Dan?" Josh sounded mildly panicked, and Dan could understand why; this was the first fight they'd had since Dan came out, and they hadn't fought for almost a year before that, so they knew that this was serious. "Oh my God, Dan, I'm so sorry."  
  
"What for?" Dan couldn't help but let his icy tone slip in, forcing Josh through the process of admitting his mistake, knowing that a reversed situation would have seen the same thing.  
  
"I just-" There was a frustrated noise from the other end of the phone, and Josh muttered something to Alicia, probably telling her to give him some privacy, before reappearing, "I'm so sorry. I was a dick, and I didn't think about your feelings, and I was a total, bigoted idiot."  
  
"Well obviously, you ARE a journalist."  
  
"Oh, shut up." Josh replied, instinctively, in an obvious jokey tone, but then regretted it, "No, wait, I'm sorry, I really am. I didn't realise how much of a dick I was being, but now I do, and I'm really sorry."  
  
Practically uncertain, Dan was torn; he really wanted to keep the icy tone up, to really force Josh through the punishment, but they both knew that he didn't have enough energy in him to do that. Instead, all he wanted to do was curl up in a ball and accept Josh's apology and ignore all the sniffles inside him, instead choosing to joke about anime and talk about video games and Alicia. It would be so much easier.  
  
"It was a really dick thing to do."  
  
"It really was. I'm so sorry."  
  
There was a pause, and Dan was almost unsure how to fill it. Ultimately, he knew what he _should_ say, but there was also what he _wanted_ to say. And they were kind of conflicting.  
  
"It hurts." He decided, eventually trying to go for a mixture of the two. "When you say things like that."  
  
Thanking every God in existence for their silent bond, Dan waited patiently for his next, careful words to leave his mouth, knowing that Josh wouldn't interrupt or hurry him.  
  
"You- you don't experience it - the level of fear in any relationship like mine and Phil's. Yes, the world's pretty great, yeah we could get married, but that doesn't stop people being wankers. We get harassed on the street a couple of times a week, so we generally don't hold hands, and we keep kissing to a minimum." He let out a breath of air slowly, thinking carefully about how to put it, but he figured Josh was a journalist, so he could take it, "You don't know how stressful it is to have to think about it all the time. When you introduce Alicia as your girlfriend, that's just that. Whereas we have to spend our entire lives checking and guessing and never knowing if someone's going to be okay with it. Often, we just don't say anything, because it's easier. And, Christ, we fucking _know_ people aren't okay with it, we know that extremely well."  
  
Here it comes.  
  
"But Josh, when you said that in the bar, if you had any inkling of what it's like, you would never have 'expressed your concern' in that way. It wasn't concern for us you were feeling; it was concern for yourself, and your reputation. And that really fucking sucks, because - I know it's been hard for you to accept the whole thing - but you're one of my closest friends. And I would never have pinned you as someone with a problem. Yes, it's weird, because you're never really been exposed to gay relationships, so obviously it's going to be hard at first, but it's-... It's childish. And it's really fucking shitty. And it really hurt for someone I trust a _lot_ to do something like that, even unintentionally."  
  
There was another pause, where Dan contemplated all he said, and decided that it was time for a response.  
  
"Ok, I think that's it. Can you- could you take some time, maybe, to think about it?"  
  
"God, yes, of course-" Josh drew a calculated intake of breath, "I know we don't say it much, man, but I do love you-" (After this he made a suspicious noise in the back of his throat) "And I'm really fucking sorry. Could we- I dunno, maybe have a beer later this week and talk about it properly? I didn't want to do a cheesy rom-com thing and show up on your doorstep, 'cause I thought that was a bit invasive, but I do really want to talk about it face-to-face, if you'll let me?"  
  
"Ah, yeah, yeah, that sounds good. Gives you time to hone your 'I'm so fucking sorry" speech." Dan teased, lightly, but he felt a serious weight had been lifted, even though it wasn't quite reconciled, "As long as I get to obliterate you in MarioKart, that's fine by me."  
  
"Pfft, I might be very sorry, but I'm not a pushover. I'll beat your ass, nerd."  
  
"Fight me." Dan muttered, slipping back into the easy routine of friendly insults, and sunk into the couch a little as he let go of the situation a little. It still really hurt, and he probably wouldn't ever forget the look in Josh's eyes, but it was getting better. He was willing to listen.  
  
"I will. Thursday evening. Bring your losing stripes."  
  
"Kay. Text me when." Dan finally turned to look at Phil - having resolutely stared at the ceiling throughout the entire, nerve-wracking conversation - and smiled, reaching out to take his hand as he wrapped up the phone call. "Kay, see ya. Bye."  
  
Quiet settled as Dan carefully slid the phone back onto the table, before leaning into Phil's body and sighing heavily.  
  
"Fuck."  
  
"You handled it really well, bear, honestly."  


“Really?”

“Yeah. Pinky swear.”

Phil gently hooked his free pinky finger around Dan’s, causing the brunette to sigh a soft, sweet sigh.

“I love you.”

“I love you, too.”

\--

“Hey, you okay?”

They’d been on the train for about two hours now, and they had another half an hour before the train pulled into Manchester Piccadilly station. From there, Phil’s parents were coming to pick them up to drive back to Phil’s family home, where they were going to be staying for the next four days.

Dan was kind of terrified; whilst he was sure that the Lesters were lovely people (and they were, from the small amounts of them he’d seen through Facetime and the infinite stories he’d heard from Phil), he was kind of convinced that they weren’t going to like him.

He vaguely knew Martyn from the time he came down to London to visit Phil about four months ago, who could apparently tell from the second he walked into the apartment that someone else had been living there too, despite the fact that Dan had begrudgingly moved back into his house with the others for the duration of Martyn’s stay. When Phil had mentioned Dan’s name in conversation, Martyn had apparently clicked his fingers and said “So _that’s_ the guy that put green tea in your kitchen. He has good taste.” and that was kind of the end of it. When Dan met up with Martyn and Phil briefly for drinks on the last night (he had an early morning shoot the next morning, in addition to being really nervous about meeting Phil’s brother), Martyn had seemed really nice, but Dan hadn’t really let them settle on the ‘relationship’ conversation, hoping instead that they could find a different time to discuss it.

And that time was probably going to be in the duration of this 4 day long visit.

Damn it.

“Yeah, yeah, I’m fine.” Dan tried to smile, but it was no use lying to Phil, who was sat in the seat opposite him on the train, their legs tangled together underneath the insufficiently spaced table, with his eyebrows raised. Dan sighed instead of protesting. “You know it’s just nerves. This is just a big deal, and I don’t want to screw it up.”

“You won’t.” Phil assured, reaching his hand out to take Dan’s, and squeezing it gently across the table, “Trust me, they’ll love you.”

Dan squeezed back, and looked out the window at the green fields littered with sheep as they trundled by, trying to recollect his panicked thoughts.

“I mean, _objectively_ , I know that they made _you_ , and you’re my favourite person, so they can’t be too hard to win over, but then when I get nervous, I get kind of cocky, and I really hate myself like that, and I don’t want them to think that that’s me.”

“I'll make sure you don’t get cocky.” Phil half-teased, but he pulled his hand out of Dan’s then, reaching into his phone for his pocket, “We’ve only got half an hour left, do you want to play Fruit Ninja duel to take your mind off it?”

“Sure.”

And for the next thirty minutes, Dan forgot about the stress of Phil’s family.

Until they pulled into the train station, and had to wait in the car park to get picked up.

“You’ll be fine.” Phil promised, taking Dan’s hand again as he headed towards the end of the row his mum texted that they were parked in. Phil was also in charge of their joint suitcase (their clothes had gotten so jumbled at this point they barely remembered whose was whose anyway), which was wobbling a little as he tried to balance it in one hand whilst threading his fingers through Dan’s with the other. “Honestly, just breathe, and try not to mention _too much_ how amazing you are, else they might ditch me for you.”

Snorting in response, Dan allowed himself to be soothed by Phil’s voice a little, ignoring the fact that he would be meeting Phil’s family in less than two minutes.

(“Phil, isn’t the car a blue Ford focus?”

“Yeah, do you see it?”

“I think we just walked past it.”

“Are you sure?”

“Yeah, your brother just got out.”)

Okay, much less than two minutes.

“Hey!” Phil greeted his brother and mother in quick succession, briefly introducing Dan before allowing his boyfriend to take the suitcase to the boot (mainly to avoid him standing there awkwardly whilst everyone said hello). When he returned from his quest to the boot, Martyn simply said “hey”, and got back into the car, obviously not feeling like they needed a big reunion. However, Phil’s mum was clearly excited about this, as she moved towards Dan to hug him.

(Mistake. Dan knew he was 6’3 of unhuggable awkwardness, but Mrs Lester didn’t seem to mind.)

“Hop in, love. We’ve got a good hour of driving ahead of us, what with them shutting the M62.”

Dan smiled back, unable to resist her instant charm, and went to sit in the back, leaving Phil the driver’s side because he knew how much he preferred it.

“So, Dan,” Phil’s mother began, before she even started the engine, resolutely buckling her seatbelt, “I’ve heard so much about you, but I haven’t had the chance to ask you any questions. Is it true you studied at Cambridge?”

This was going to be awkward.

“Uh, yeah, I did English Literature.”

“Wow, that must have been hard - what was it like?”

Just before Dan could think back to the days he spent holed up in his room, desperately dreading each upcoming class and the constant fear of seeing Raj again, he felt Phil take his hand, resting it in Dan’s lap and rubbing his thumb gently over the back of Dan's hand in a calming motion. Instead, Dan tried to think back to his first term; back to the magic and idyllic nature of it all, before it turned to hell.

“Well, I’m not gonna lie, it was pretty weird to start off with.” He licked his lips, hating the sound of his own voice echoing in the car, “I mean, everyone was pretty posh, as in everyone had ‘boarded’ at some point in their life, and they all kind of fit right in there, when I didn’t? So yeah, adjusting to that lifestyle was a bit weird, but once I changed to that it was really good. The lessons were always really interesting, and there were a few other people there who didn’t know what was going on either, so it was pretty good in the end.”

“That sounds great,” Phil’s mum appeared to be only half-concentrating as she drove, and Dan didn’t blame her (Manchester roads could get confusing), but he couldn’t help but feel a bit stupid for rattling off that whole speech when she was barely paying attention.

“So do you still keep in touch with people from Cambridge, then?” Martyn volunteered from the front seat, realising his mum was too preoccupied for the minute.

“Uh, sort of.” Dan could only think of a handful of people he still actually spoke to. “My housemates all went to Cambridge with me, but I left after my second year, so I didn’t really ‘complete’ the experience, and I guess a lot of people just dropped off. My housemates are all great though, I don’t think I’ll be losing them any time soon.”

“Are they your current housemates?”

Dan had literally no idea how to answer that.

Technically, he was still paying rent for them, but no electricity or water bills, and he was paying for half the bills at Phil's flat, but no rent. He was basically living at Phil’s, but keeping all his stuff at the house. So yes, legally he was still their housemate, but in reality he was Phil’s.

“Uh, kind of.” Dan had a feeling that Martyn knew exactly what he was asking. Bastard. “I’m still paying the rent with them, so I’ll say yes.”

“Right.” Martyn was grinning (Dan could see him in the wing mirror), but he didn’t really mind; it felt like the sort of thing he’d say to his brother’s partner if he ever brought one home, so he kind of let it slide.

“So, did you finish that website you’d been working on?” Phil asked Martyn, suddenly changing the direction of the conversation a little, which Dan was immensely grateful for.

Whilst Martyn talked about the website - which was surely impressive, but Dan couldn’t quite concentrate right now - the brunette looked out the window, watching slowly as the city streets outside the car turned to patchy motorway and the motorway turned to smaller B-roads, with houses littered either side.

After just under an hour of driving and scattered conversations, they pulled up in a neat driveway, lined with a hedge on one side and a lawn on the other side.

“Oh my God, Mrs Magson’s still alive?” Phil asked, sounding a little horrified from the backseat, but staring intently out the window at a small woman pulling a shopping basket behind her on the adjacent road as they pulled in.

“Yep.” Martyn confirmed, unclicking his seatbelt and turning round, whispering conspiratorially. “She cornered me yesterday just after I got here, and she kept trying to force sweets on me. I think she's trying to poison me.”

“Maybe she’s actually an alien, and the real Mrs Magson died years ago-” Phil shot back, instantly, his mind clearly spinning this story at lightning speed, “She’s trying to poison you so that she can take on a human vessel and continue her world domination in a younger body.”

“Obviously,” Martyn grinned back, as Phil’s mum unbuckled her belt and turned to stare at them both intensely.

“If I hear you saying anything of the sort to Mrs Magson, the pair of you will find yourselves without any clothes for the rest of your stay, and you will be forced to wear your old superhero costumes the entire time. Don't you dare."  
  
With that, she pushed the car door open and got out - surprisingly gracefully, but she probably had a ton of practise - and closed it on her sons, who were both grinning faintly, but had silently already agreed not to mention the Mrs Magson thing at least until they reached their deathbeds, for fear of actually having to carry through with this threat.  
  
"Right, shall we go?" Phil said, after a beat of silence, before turning to smile at Dan encouragingly and squeeze his hand. Dan nodded, and went to follow Phil in getting out of the car, but Martyn cleared his throat, and Phil groaned.  
  
"Martyn, it's really not necessar-"  
  
"Just keep moving, please." Martyn said, a little too nicely, before continuing, "I'd like a word with you, Dan, if you don't mind."  
  
"Uh, sure." Dan was already sure that this was the 'brotherly protective' talk, and nodded Phil on, who reluctantly peeled himself away from his boyfriend, grabbing the suitcase out of the boot before wheeling into the house.  
  
"So." Martyn said, finally, turning to face Dan, and Dan decided to slide to the other side of the car so that they could communicate without Martyn having to break his neck. He wasn't sure, but Martyn seemed to appreciate the gesture. "Dan."  
  
"Martyn."  
  
"Do you know about what happened with Phil's last boyfriend?" He asked, his voice low, and his eyes serious.  
  
This wasn't going to be the normal 'big brother' talk, then.  
  
"Yeah." Dan swallowed, trying not to think about the things Phil had told him had happened. After the first confession, he'd let slip tiny things, slowly building a big picture that showed Dan how much he'd originally downplayed it. He started talking about the manipulation, the fights, the bruises - they were still working on it, but Dan felt confident that he had a good idea of the circumstances.  
  
"Good. He only told us bits and pieces, so I'm glad he's finally letting his guard down around someone that isn't just Louise or PJ." Martyn reshuffled a little in his seat, his face set, but it was obvious he hated the idea of it.  
  
"We're working on it." Dan said, without really thinking about it. "I've got a younger brother too, I can kinda guess how much it must suck."  
  
"Yeah." Martyn swallowed, but he smiled at Dan, "Anyway, I imagine I don't need to give you a whole speech about it. I guess you know enough, then."  
  
"Well, I wouldn't want to stand in your way if you have anything planned?" Dan grinned, trying to lighten the tension a little, and it worked, Martyn laughing in response, and he stretched, cracking his joints and picking up his phone from where he'd thrown it in the pocket at the front of the car.  
  
"Nah, you're alright, I'm no actor like you. I can't really pull of the 'intimidating' look either. Shall we go in?"  
  
"Sure."  
  
They walked in companionable silence up to the door, greeted with Phil standing just inside the doorway, having already said hello to his father and to Cornelia, and was now waiting for the return of his brother and (hopefully) his boyfriend. The hallway was a soothing cream, with dark mahogany furniture, and Phil looked so beautifully in place there, his arms folded as he waited impatiently.  
  
"You alright?" He asked, as soon as Dan stepped through the door, ignoring Dan's small laugh at his worry. "Was he really rude?"  
  
"No, no. Very intimidating though." Dan smirked his way through, knowing that Martyn was right behind him, rolling his eyes, but snaking his hand into Phil's anyway and pulling him away from the doorway, into the hall, where he could let Martyn walk past. The Lester Household - whilst not exactly 'grand' - was an extremely nice house, and Dan was starting to feel the nerves kick back in again.  
  
Phil obviously felt this in Dan's grip, and waited for his brother to go past and into the living room before pulling Dan into a short hug, his warm chest inspiring some hope in Dan, but it didn't stop him letting out a shaky breath into his boyfriend's neck.  
  
Why was he never this nervous to meet Annabelle's parents?  
  
Maybe because this time he cared so much more.  
  
When he pulled back, Phil pressed a gentle kiss on Dan's forehead (forcing him onto his tiptoes), and opened his mouth to say something reassuring, but instead he heard a small commotion from the kitchen behind them, the door suddenly creaking shut and a kamikaze of voices erupting in the wake, hissing blame.  
  
Trying not to laugh, but allowing himself a grin, Phil gently tugged Dan by the hand to the room, and pushed the door open.  
  
"Er, hello?"  
  
"Ah, yes, sorry dear." Mrs Lester was holding a tray of tea with milk and sugar, next to Cornelia, who was holding the matching plate of biscuits, both wearing slightly guilty, flustered expressions. "We, uh, didn't realise you were still out there - how do you take your tea, Dan?"  
  
She split these two phrases up with a small cough in the back of her throat, clearly trying to change the subject, and smiling weakly as she did so. It wasn't really enough, but the pair took it anyway.  
  
"Uh, just milk normally, but I can do it in there - it's fine."  
  
"Oh, yes, but just so I know for future reference."  
  
"Oh, 'kay." Dan nodded, smiling back at her beam, before gently shuffling back into the hallway and into the lounge, where Mr Lester and Martyn were waiting, clearly arguing about something.  
  
"Ah, Dan, good to meet you!" Mr Lester instantly jumped up from his spot on the sofa, almost hitting Martyn in the face with his elbow, and Dan had to seriously smother a smile at the familial similarities.  
  
In this afternoon time period, Dan was introduced to Mr Lester and Cornelia, and they soon all settled down to swap stories and catch up, despite Dan being totally new and knowing nothing about the original gossip. It was nearing 7pm when the wine was introduced (no dinner, so on an empty stomach, still sloshing with tea) and the real stories started to come out.  
  
"So then, that _hag_ from upstairs finally decided to move out." Cornelia said, managing to get it out through her giggles, with Martyn struggling to keep a straight face beside her, "So we booked a weekend away for the day she was supposed to move out, right, and then we left her a little 'Goodbye card'."  
  
"You didn't!" Mrs Lester half-cried, her laughter interrupting her a little, but it was a soft, pleasant sound.  
  
"Yep." Cornelia's expression was smeared in mischief, and her eyes were shining, "And in this card, we-"  
  
She was laughing too hard to continue, so Martyn finished it for her.  
  
"We left one of those giftcards, with a 6 month subscription. To Pornhub. And we said-" Martyn fought to contain his composure, and finally managed to regain it, his grin awfully contagious, but continuing - "we said 'Hope this will make you less cranky for the new neighbours! Best wishes, Martyn and Cordelia xx'."  
  
Everyone in the room was wheezing - they couldn't help it, Martyn and Cordelia were so flawlessly charming together that every story they told was hilarious - and Phil had to put his wine down on the table for fear of spilling it.  
  
The lounge was obviously the 'nice' room, with a large expanse of cream carpet and a gold feature wall, complete with a classy cream and black fireplace and a television in the corner. It was really _really_ nice, and Dan was sipping his red wine ridiculously carefully out of the terror of spilling it on the beautiful, soft sofas.  
  
That would _not_ be the way to make a good first impression.  
  
When the tables were turned, however, and he was asked if he had any good stories, he really couldn't think of any, and had to embarrassingly pass on the story front.

"Us getting photographed in the park was quite funny." Phil pointed out, sipping his drink neatly and grinning at everyone's reactions.  
  
"That was a-ages ago." Dan said, hoping no-one would bring up the photo, trying NOT to be the centre of attention, for once, "And it wasn't really funny, it was just weird."  
  
"Do you have the picture?" Cornelia asked, clearly curious, leaning forward in her chair a little.  
  
Damn it.  
  
"Yeah, hang on-" Phil dug in his pockets, pulling out his iPhone and unlocking it quickly.  
  
"Oh my God, no, I look so bad-" Dan half-pleaded, but his voice wasn't serious, and he was trying to smother his grin. He knew that it was actually probably the only decent story they had, that didn't involve some awful sex idea or getting drunk with Louise.  
  
Phil showed the photo, and Dan cringed, noting how awkward his posture was, and how ridiculously loved-up they looked, even from a distance and from almost 7 months ago.  
  
"Aw!" Cornelia grabbed at the phone, cooing, showing it to Martyn, "What's the photographer's name? He has a good eye, to be honest. We should totally get one of these done."  
  
Okay, it went better than expected.  
  
Slowly, they moved on from that topic of conversation, flitting through people's jobs, before finally resting on Dan.  
  
"So, what are you working on at the moment, Dan?" Mr Lester asked, watching the young man finish his glass of red wine and gently place it on the table.  
  
"Uh, a film, but I'm afraid I can't talk about it." Dan mimed zipping his lips, but laughed when he saw everyone's expressions, "No, seriously! It's an adaption, so they have to get everyone to sign all these super secret contracts, and no-one's supposed to know until, like, January, when we wrap it all."  
  
"What's it an adaption of?" Martyn asked, his eyes curious.  
  
Dan opened his mouth to reply - ("It's a live action Midsummer Night's Dream with a bunch of brand new actors-") but managed to catch himself soon after saying the "It's-"  
  
"It's a li- ahh, no! You seriously can't ask me anything. Especially after wine." Dan pointed around at them all sternly. "You'll have to get a few more glasses of wine in me before that."  
  
Phil laughed from behind him, practically to himself, before starting-  
  
"Yeah, but you said before you'd need a few glasses of wine in you before you let me-"  
  
He suddenly cut off, realising what he was about to say, and lost his words.  
  
Spoiler alert: it was something about tongues and the general asshole region.  
  
They both knew exactly what he was talking about, and knew that they so could not say that in front of Phil's parents. And Phil was clearly struggling to come up with an alternative in his wine-soaked brain, his face going slightly red in the tiny pause.  
  
It wasn't long, but it was long enough for everyone to know that it wasn't something suitable, and there was no way to backtrack. Thankfully, Dan had done years of improvisation practice.  
  
"Paint my nails?" He said, his voice just that _little_ bit higher, enough to confirm that that was definitely not what they were going to say in the first place.  
  
And now there was a silence.  
  
"Uh, is that a euphemism?" Martyn asked, his laughter at his brother's failure getting less and less subtle as the seconds went by. After a few seconds of badly concealed smirking, he began to laugh properly, causing everyone in the room to follow suit, Cornelia practically crying, except Phil, who groaned and buried his head in Dan's chest, mumbling fiercely under his breath about 'bloody alcohol'. Gently, giggling a little thanks to the drink and the ridiculous situation, Dan removed the wine glass from Phil's hand, and placed it on the coffee table in front of them.  
  
"I think that's enough of _that_." Dan laughed again, rubbing Phil's back in a show of solidarity, but Phil remained in Dan's lap for a few more seconds, listening to the laughter, and coming back up pouting and leaning heavily on Dan's shoulder.  
  
"I definitely need something to eat soon." He declared, and Dan definitely agreed. It was twenty past nine, so they'd been drinking for almost two and a half hours, with the last meal being that sandwich and coke they split on the train. "Else I'm going to seriously start talking about things you don't want to hear."  
  
"Alright, alright!" Mrs Lester protested, still laughing a little at the humiliation of her son, but she was looking at him so lovingly, so happy that he was finally happy. "Are you alright to order pizza, Dan? I've tried to be all adult with the wine, but I think it might have been a little too much for some of us."  
  
"Pizza sounds great." He assured, and and instantly stood to help her clear away the teacups from before, ignoring Phil's whine of protest when he left.  
  
Trying not to clatter the crockery too much, Dan gently stacked the plates next to the dishwasher, with a bunch of other things from earlier. Without missing a beat, Phil's mum had opened the Dominoes app on her phone, and was adding things to her cart, now leant against the side, swiping carefully.  
  
"Will you and Phil share a pizza, dear, or shall I order you one each?"  
  
"Uh, we can split a pepperoni." Dan said, thinking about how much wine they'd consumed, "That should probably soak up enough of the wine, anyway."  
  
She smirked a little, her gentle face making it so unnatural, but it wasn't unkind; she was still adding things to the cart, but she was happy to talk to Dan whilst she did it, as they leant on opposite sides of the kitchen counters.    
  
"Goodness, I've only seen him worse than this once, and that was after he'd had a _lot_ to drink. He's not actually had that much, has he? I guess it's just the lack of food."  
  
"Yeah, he's normally quite good at holding his own on the alcohol front, to be honest." Dan grinned, thinking back to drinking games with friends where he'd had to pull out way before Phil had, marvelling at the strength of stomach he seemed to have.  
  
Well, until now.  
  
"You are looking after my son, aren't you?" Mrs Lester suddenly asked, a little sternly, looking at Dan over her phone with focused eyes.  
  
"Of course." Dan replied, instantly, almost surprised that she could think he wouldn't, but then thought about Phil's track history and softened a little, "We look after each other very well."  
  
"Let me guess, he still forgets to pay his bills every month?" She smiled, reassured by Dan's insistent response, and going back to her phone, "Honestly, that boy thinks he can get away with murder."  
  
"Well, yeah." Dan had to admit, he constantly had to remind Phil to look at the calendar for any upcoming bills, "But he's the only reason we ever get anywhere on time, so it kind of balances out."  
  
"You really are quite the duo." She grinned, and pushed off the counter, nudging her glasses back onto her head and heading back into the corridor. "How long have you been together now?"  
  
Doing some quick maths on his fingers, Dan managed to answer before they reached the lounge again.  
  
"Uh, just over ten months, I think."  
  
"Wow, almost a year? And you only _just_ met us? Phil really does know how to keep things secret." She grinned, and pushed the door open, her expression moulding into something a little more stern. "Phil Lester, if you've been dating this boy since December, why did you only tell us in June?"  
  
Phil's face jolted up from where it was resting lazily on the sofa arm, and he groaned in response, catching Dan's surprised expression.  
  
From behind Mrs Lester, Dan mouthed:  
  
"Sorry, I didn't know! But, June? Really?"  
  
When she turned around to see why her son was staring behind her, Dan cut out the act, smiling at her as if to say 'what can I do?' in terms of Phil's behaviour. To be fair, it wasn't a lot.  
  
"When did you tell your family, Dan?" She asked, eventually moving into the room and taking up her spot in her chair again, and Dan shuffled into the spot next to his boyfriend, amused by the lazy flop he'd found himself in.  
  
"Uh, around March, I think." Dan guessed, although it was probably pretty near the end. "About Easter."  
  
"Liar. You told them, like, a week before I did." Phil mumbled, from his dignified position of Practically Upside Down.  
  
"Well," Technically, Phil was right. "Okay, my brother knew by Easter. But I told my family in late May, yes."  
  
"If we're talking brothers, I told Martyn in February." Phil pointed out, wafting his hand in that general direction. "And that's not including the sappiness from when I first met you."  
  
"Oh, God, we're not going to talk about that." Martyn cringed, from where he was sandwiched next to Cornelia. "I practically had to listen to bloody sonnets, and I wish I was kidding."  
  
"Aw, did you talk about how big and dreamy my beautiful brown eyes were?" Dan teased, but Martyn shook his head vigorously.  
  
"No, no - literally don't. That's too close to home."  
  
"Actually," Phil managed, struggling ungracefully into a sitting position, pointing a finger at Dan, "I wrote a poem about how big your head is, and how your ego needs to shrink about ten sizes before it becomes normal."  
  
"Liar." Dan shot back, grinning, mockingly, but leaning forward and kissing Phil gently anyway, pulling back quickly when he realised where he was, and sitting back in his seat, a little embarrassed at the speed of his reaction, but trying not to dwell on it.

But when he saw the expressions of everyone else in the room - the relief and happiness at Dan’s presence - and then he didn't mind quite so much.

-

Scrabble was the evening activity of the next night after Phil stayed in with a headache during the morning, and then dragged himself out for a walk around a nearby reservoir. The pair had driven with Cornelia and Martyn both ways, and had ended up singing random old songs at the top of their lungs, Phil’s headache forgotten.

However, Phil’s family seemed to forget that they were playing against an English Lit/English Language Student team, and therefore everyone else was ‘fucking obliterated’, in Martyn’s eloquent words. It took a few more drinks for them to give up completely and Martyn suggested a movie.

One he’d ‘found online’ and insisted was ‘ _really_ good’.

They waited patiently whilst he booted it up, Phil leant in the crook of Dan’s arm, their head and chin respectively softly wedged together. It had taken a while for Dan to adjust to being affectionate with Phil in front of his family, but he was now starting to relax, enough so that this felt normal.  
  
It helped that Phil's family seemed to relax a little more every time they had a tiny exchange of affection.  
  
Whilst Martyn had been fiddling with the television and his iPad for a while, trying to get the Apple TV to work, they had been idly chatting about Phil's father's job at the office, and rearrangement of the department, but Martyn suddenly gave a small cheer, pointing at the screen, proudly, as the logo appeared.  
  
Frowning slightly, Dan tried to remember where he'd seen that logo before, but pushed it to the back of his mind as the three couples relaxed into their seats, the shuffling gently tailing away as the opening scene began.  
  
The camera followed rolling fields, the camera quality not particularly great, but the view made up for it a little. As the screen followed through a small town, the small shops and the people on the high street, Dan felt a prickling sensation in the back of his neck.  
  
This film was weirdly, uncomfortable familiar.  
  
_Oh, fuck no._

"Martyn," Dan asked, trying to sound casual, but failing miserably, "What's the name of this film?"  
  
"Oh, you recognise it?" Martyn asked, twisting in his chair to meet Dan's eye, and he just fucking knew that Martyn had done this deliberately, the shit-eating grin barely concealed in his expression.  
  
"Jesus Christ." Dan sunk in his seat and forced Phil to swap spots with him, so that Dan's head was buried in Phil's chest, as Martyn started to laugh, and Phil responded instantly with worry, "No, no, I'm fine, I promise. _Ugh_."  
  
"Wait, wait, just twenty more seconds-" Martyn said, ignoring the curious questions that were being probed by everyone else, and pointing at the screen insistently.  
  
"Oh my God, Dan, are you in this?" Phil asked, quietly, and Dan let out a muffled groan into his chest, and felt it shake with laughter in response. "Oh my _god_."  
  
"No, no, no, it's SO bad." Dan half-pleaded, pulling his face out of Phil's shirt for a few moments, knowing he was going to appear on screen any second, "And my _hair_ \- oh fuck."  
  
And there he was, the little 21 year old him, in a thin grey hoodie and with the most ridiculous fringe known to man. Also, he had gone to Mexico a few weeks previously, and therefore looked fucking _orange_. The awkward exposure on the film made the production look cheap and tacky, despite the fact they pumped a shameful amount of money into it.  
  
" _No_." Dan whined into Phil's chest, refusing to listen to his first lines of the movie, which sounded SO much worse in retrospect, but he knew had sounded shit even then. "Oh god."  
  
"Tabitha, I know you said you didn't like Eliza, but did you really have to kill her?" The On-Screen Dan asked the girl stood next to him, warily, as they looked down the hill they were stood on, watching the ambulance drive away from the house below. His tone would probably have been passable, if it hadn't been for his awful facial expression, where he'd tried to raise his eyebrows, but instead had looked constipated, and the real life Dan wanted to sink into the sofa cushions and never return.  
  
"Ah, my stellar acting debut." He deadpanned, but he was still half-buried in Phil's chest, ignoring the fact that it was shaking as a result of Phil laughing, and trying to picture himself anywhere else.  
  
"It's not that bad?" Cornelia offered, but her voice was very high-pitched, suggesting that she was also trying to conceal laughter, and no-one else attempted to support this claim.  
  
"Hey, Dan!" A female on-screen voice called, and Dan let out another groan into Phil's chest, this time point-blank refusing to look at the screen.  
  
"Who is it?" Phil asked, as the girl came bounding into sight, gripping onto On-Screen Dan's arm heartily and reeling off a mini-speech about the death of this Eliza girl.  
  
"That's Annabelle." Dan said, sighing as he finally looked at the screen, taking in how young the pair looked with a grimace. "My ex-girlfriend."  
  
"So you're not gay then?" Phil's mum asked, curiously, turning to face Dan rather than the tv for a moment.  
  
"Bisexual." Dan muttered, slightly uncomfortable with this sudden confession, but not really sure how else he could respond. He felt Phil's grip squeeze gently, as if in reassurance.  
  
"She's pretty." Martyn noted, from his seat, but then dissolved into sniggers immediately afterwards, as the camera panned back to Dan, "God, I can't get over your _hair_."  
  
"Literally don't, it's bloody _horrific_." Secretly incredibly glad that Martyn had changed the subject, Dan allowed himself to dwell shamelessly on his Greatest Hair Mistakes, cringing at the terribleness of the film, but relaxing into the teasing atmosphere, surprisingly refreshed at this comfortable environment. He could imagine them doing it for any of them, and he didn't feel attacked in the slightest.  
  
"S'alright, babe, you should have seen mine in 2011, honestly." With that, Phil pressed a kiss to Dan's forehead reassuringly, and allowed him to bury further into his jumper.  
  
The rest of the evening passed in a much similar manner, Phil actually getting a bit teary-eyed at Dan's emotional scene near the end, but generally they all poked harmless fun at the low-budget film and the generally shit and predictable plotline. However, the plot twist at the end did surprise everyone, even if it was only a little, which planted a small seed of smugness deep in Dan's stomach, although he mainly quelled it.  
  
"Bed?" Phil asked, pushing Dan's fringe off his forehead, as the credits rolled, and Dan nodded sleepily, exhausted from the ritual humiliation. As they all stood up, stretching their tired bones and cracking out the aches, Phil couldn't help but poke Dan in the side. "I can't believe you killed your best friend."  
  
After a moment of blankness, Dan realised Phil was talking about the film, and a small grin spread on his face.  
  
"Yeah, weren't expecting that, were ya? She was gonna tell the police though, I had to get rid of her somehow."  
  
"Brutal." Phil gently linked his fingers through Dan's, yawning, and trying to gesture a 'goodnight', to his family, which they seemed to all understand, before he succeeded in verbal communication. "Night, see you all in the morning."  
  
Everyone mumbled their gentle replies, and the group drifted off to their separate rooms, Dan and Phil practically falling into bed when they got through the door, the pair of them having both forgotten to take off their regular clothes.  
  
"Do we bother with pyjamas?" Dan said, muffled, from where his face was in his pillow, a few minutes later, and turned to raise his eyebrows at Phil. "I really can't be arsed."  
  
"Neither, let's just ditch the jeans." Phil mumbled back, unbuttoning his jeans after a few moments and kicking them off half-heartedly, before crawling under the covers, Dan quickly following suit.  
  
Their train left at 10:15 the next day, meaning they had to be on the road by 9am, and neither of them were looking forward to the early start, especially because neither of them were particularly great at packing. Either way, they had basically reached the end of their stay, and Dan generally felt very successful in his accomplishments.  
  
"Do you think this went okay?" He asked Phil, scooting closer under the bedcovers and sliding a hand around his waist, relaxing into the warmth.  
  
"Yeah, it went great, bear, promise." Phil mumbled, sleepily, returning the half hug and entangling their legs purposefully, before finally letting his breathing slow. "Night, love."  
  
"Night." Dan replied, his brain half-asleep too, and he settled into a comfortable position, the dark room a blanket around them, finally feeling like they'd made it to the last stage of their relationship; successful lengthy familial interaction.  
  
Well, not _quite_ the last stage, but somehow even that didn't seem so far off.

\--

After quickly checking the lounge and the kitchen, Phil ducked through the door of what had become ‘their’ bedroom in the flat, spotting Dan lying on the bed using the mirror on the wall. He was lying in one of Phil’s shirts and his boxers, scrolling through a Reddit feed and snorting to himself, his hair curling a little at the edges and his eyes soft from recent sleep.

“Hey, Dan, get yourself dressed, I have plans for us this evening.”

“What kind of plans?” Dan asked, slumped against the pillows, but looking up when Phil came in, though he didn’t sit down.

“ _Surprise_ plans.” Phil couldn’t help grinning at Dan’s wary expression, leaning against the door precariously. “Good surprise plans! I’m not throwing you into a snake pit or anything.” He paused, “Unless you’re into that sort of thing, in which case I might consider it.”

“Shut up.” Dan replied, affectionately and without thinking, smiling a little at Phil’s random nature, “How am I supposed to dress for these surprise plans then? Is it like, cinema plans, dinner plans, or Oscar nomination party plans?”

“Probably about ‘dinner plans’ level.” Phil decided, after a moment of consideration, “Although I look forward to the outfit for when you get nominated for an Oscar.”

“Me too, it’s a nice daydream.” Dan joked, but pushed his Macbook off his knees and stood up awkwardly, attempting to crack his back at the same time.

“Hey, you will be nominated. And you will win. What about that film you’re starting in February?”  
  
“Yeah, maybe.” Dan then made a sudden noise of great pleasure as he clicked out the knot in his back, bring his arms forward to dramatically clasp Phil’s face, “Thank you for believing in me, you sappy nerd.”  
  
“Look who’s talking.” Phil teased, grinning, hands resting on Dan’s waist as he kissed him on the forehead (something he did only when excited about something or very, very sleepy), having to go up on his tiptoes a little to do so, “Anyway, you need to be ready to go in about an hour, is that okay?”  
  
“Uh, yeah, sure.” Dan still looked a little wary, but he also looked weirdly excited about it, “Seriously Phil, what are these plans? Last time you did this we went to that really tall restaurant with the view and the champagne.”  
  
“It’s a surprise, don’t you know the meaning of the word?” Phil joked, before kissing Dan again, and pulling away a little, “Now, I need to go pick something up, I’ll be back in just under an hour with a taxi, ‘kay?”  
  
“Okay.” Dan grinned, letting Phil go (missing the warmth instantly but pulling himself together), “See you in a bit, then.”  
  
It took Dan forty five minutes to have a shower, straighten his hair, and find something to wear that he thought would be appropriate. By the time the hour had crawled around, he’d brushed his teeth twice and had checked his fringe at least a million times. In addition, he'd brushed on the tiniest bit of eyeliner, painstakingly slowly, trying to replicate Phil's clean lines and almost managing. Once he'd managed a fairly decent line on the top of each eye, he put the pen down, refusing to mess up something that he was still learning at. He then sat to wait for the next ten minutes, his knee jigging up and down nervously.  
  
The last time Phil had done this, Dan was seriously underprepared, and had to go to the fanciest restaurant in his old jeans and a tshirt, and he was sure as hell not letting that happen again. This time, he was wearing his smart black jeans and his moth shirt, with his Givenchy jacket that he knew Phil liked. Hopefully, this would be suitable for whatever Phil was planning.  
  
Dan heard the doorbell ring before he noticed that the taxi had pulled up outside, his eyes glazed over to the world outside, and he practically fell down the stairs in his haste, stopping to fix his fringe only right before he opened the door.  
  
Ever since they'd first met, Phil surprised Dan. By now, they'd been together for just under a year (give or take a little), and Phil still pulled random things out of the bag that Dan never imagined.  
  
Like now, seeing Phil dressed up in a shirt and blazer (combined with jeans, like Dan) his eyes shining and his smile sending out beams of light in the dark, cold, London night. He was holding an envelope and a rose in one hand, and the other was tucked firmly into his pocket. It was December, after all - any fingers left exposed for too long were in serious danger of prolonged numbness.  
  
"Hi." Dan said, a little breathlessly, his word a question as well as a greeting, and Phil couldn't help but grin at Dan's expression.  
  
"Hey." He pulled his spare hand out of his pocket and extended it to Dan. Quickly, Dan checked he had a door key, before taking Phil's hand and pulling the door shut behind him, still a little in awe of the situation; Phil had obviously put a lot of thought into this.  
  
"For you, monsieur amour." He offered the rose as they walked down the front path, not hiding the envelope beneath the rose but not explaining it either. "Our taxi of destiny awaits."  
  
"Nerd." Dan shot back, instantly, his blush spreading dutifully across his cheeks and his smile widening impossibly, "What is all this?"  
  
"Wait and see." Phil was practically bouncing on the balls of his feet as he opened the taxi door for Dan, before sliding in next to him. Mysteriously, the taxi driver didn't ask them where they were going - didn't greet them at all, actually - but Phil had obviously prepped him, the radio playing quietly in the background, but not enough to disrupt their conversation. As they pulled away from the curb, Dan finally turned to Phil, his eyebrows raised.  
  
"Are you finally going to murder me? Is this what this relationship has been leading up to?" He asked, his curiosity burning in his chest, and his tongue letting the words slip out before he could stop them.  
  
"If I was going to murder you, I would have made it themed, at least." Phil practically scoffed at Dan's idea, but he gave Dan's hand a squeeze as he slipped them back together, his left hand linking into Dan's right. "I mean, I wouldn't have made it this obvious, either. Did you not see Gone Girl?"  
  
"Alright, alright." Huffing slightly, Dan just accepted that he wasn't going to know where they were going, and decided to stare out of the window as the lights of London zoomed past. It soothed him somewhat, watching the cars shuffle by, and the people walking in the streets for a second before they were gone. It was just before twenty past six, so the streets were still packed, but the lights of evening entertainment were also starting to illuminate the pavements, be it cafés, bars or-  
  
"Phil," Dan began, his voice quite slow, after about ten minutes of driving, moving at a sloth's pace through a packed area. "Are we in the West End?"  
  
Phil checked his watch, his eyebrow furrowed, but then groaned.  
  
"Damn it, Dan, could you not have waited thirty more seconds to guess that?"  
  
"What?"  
  
"Louise said you'd guess within ten minutes, I said it'd take you a bit longer. Damn you."  
  
"So, we're seeing a West End show?" Dan deduced, as the car basically came to a halt in the traffic. However, Phil ignored him in favour of leaning forward;  
  
"Hey, can we stop here?"  
  
It was a bit of a joke, as the taxi was stationary anyway and clearly wasn't going anywhere for at least a few more minutes, but the pair went through the payment exchange quickly, before Phil nodded at Dan to hop out the car.  
  
As soon as they climbed out, Phil linked his fingers through Dan's once more, his other hand still firmly on the envelope - which Dan now guessed contained tickets - and gently guided Dan through the mass of people on the road.  
  
By this point, Dan totally let Phil take the lead; he didn't know where they were going specifically or what they were going to see, but he was really quite excited about it. People were generally parting for the tall, suited man with the piercing eyes, so all Dan had to do was follow close behind and try not to get too distracted, which he managed to do fairly successfully.  
  
And then suddenly, they stopped.

In front of a large, brightly lit building, with a zombie-based title on the front.

"Phil, are we-?" Dan almost couldn't believe that they were back where they started, 15 months ago, in this building with hearts that were so much heavier and lives that were much duller.

"Okay, Dan-" Phil had stopped them on some steps in front, slightly to the side, where they could still be heard over the traffic but people weren't barging into them every two seconds. He picked up Dan's other hand, so both of them were linked, as he looked into Dan's eyes with excitement. "Today is our one year anniversary."

Shock flitted across Dan's face, before his expression became doubtful.

"Phil, our anniversary isn't for another two weeks."

"No, it's today." Phil confirmed, his eyes stern. "Because this was the only evening I could get off for the next month, because of Marie's maternity leave."

"Oh, right, okay." Dan grinned, squeezing Phil's hands, but not letting go. "Do continue. It's our anniversary?"

"Yes, our anniversary." He continued, feeling a bit silly holding Dan's hands like this in the middle of a street full of crowded people, but he pushed past it. "So we've been together for a year now, but we _met_ 15 months ago, and I thought it was only right to bring us back to the place where it all began. Think of it as a pretentious, cyclic narrative a cheesy author might use."

"Am doing." Dan grinned back, almost disbelieving at the level of thought that Phil had put into this.

"Good." Phil proceeded to say, "So I just wanted to say, before we go in, that if I was Kieran, and you were Aiden, I would have chosen you a million times over, even if it would have killed everyone in the bunker eventually."

"Me too." Dan replied, softly, almost aching to kiss Phil, but forcing himself to wait until the speech was over.

"Yeah, so, basically, I hope you enjoy it, even if it's weird to see someone else doing your role and saying your lines. However, I _can_ promise that the actor is nowhere _near_ as hot as you, and your acting is infinitely better."

"Thank you." After a moment, Dan double-checked his response, "I think."

With that, Phil leant forward and kissed Dan, chastely and quickly - because they were in a very public area and the show started in fifteen minutes.

"Happy anniversary." He said, finally, which Dan repeated back at him, before gently pulling Dan by the hand, leading him through the entrance and into the theatre, briefly paused by the usher, but then they continued, weaving through the people until they reached their seats in the stalls.

Just as they sat down, Dan let his brow furrow, the positioning of these seats being eerily familiar, before he realised-

"Phil, you sneaky little fucker." He hissed, trying not to draw attention to himself as he looked at Phil with simultaneous admiration and exasperation, "Are these the seats we sat in when we had the cupcakes?"

"Maybe." Phil replied, the grin on his face giving it away instantly, obviously really pleased that they'd figured it out. "There may also be drinks with a few cast members after this, including your faves, so don't expect an early night."

"I never did." Dan shot back, instantly, the smutty undertone to his comment not really noticeable to those who didn't know him, but Phil picked up on it instantaneously, and tried not to let the thoughts get to him before the play even started.

"Shh." Phil nudged his arm in an attempt to quieten him, and then the lights were dimming; the show was starting.

  
Somehow, it was weirdly nostalgic.

As the characters danced across the stage and delivered their lines, Dan couldn’t help but tear up, especially when it came to his and Chris’ scene, because it was still Chris, but not Dan. It was wrong but so lovely to watch, because this other actor - who Dan had probably been introduced to at one point, but had to check the programme for his name - was where he was supposed to be.

It wasn’t so much bitterness; Dan just felt rather protective over his role, and the new actor was playing it rather differently, so it took some time to get used to it.

After a while, Dan was totally lost in the play, barely noticing the interval and messily wiping away tears when it came to the final scene. Even though the hopelessness in the actor’s voice was a lot stronger than he had played it, he couldn’t help but notice the wide array of non-visual cues this person used, and he loved it in a strange, new way that he couldn’t quite relate to, but at the same time couldn’t separate himself from.

When the final moment came, the sinking to the knees and the desperate sob of the main character, and the lights snapped off, Dan felt the harsh tug of sorrow in his gut and he felt Phil’s hand on his before they clapped infinitely for the actors. Harsh stinging spread through his palms, and Dan felt the noise of the theatre in his chest: it had been months since he’d felt that, but it didn’t make the sensation any less incredible.

He didn’t even have to be on stage to feel it.

As the actors came out and did their bows, Dan couldn’t help but let the emotion overwhelm him, and Phil knew it. As soon as they began to shuffle out of the aisles, Phil took a hold of Dan’s hand, and pulled him to the side, waiting for a few other people to go past.

“You alright?”

“Yeah.” Dan squeezed Phil’s hand, smiling back at him, the fondness in his expression almost overwhelming. “Thank you.”  
  
“You’re welcome, love.” He smiled, back, but was still looking enthusiastic, and he was visibly trying not to bounce a little. A classic sign of an excited Phil.  
  
“What?” Dan questioned, and Phil immediately knew what he was talking about, but instead chose to grin in a - supposedly mysterious - way.  
  
“You’ll see. C’mon.”  
  
20 minutes later, they were sat in the busy pub that was tucked away down a little alley near the theatre, frequented by many an actor from the West End. The majority of the cast were promised to come, a few of them having already trickled in, and they had already claimed a large corner seat in the shadows.  
  
One hand on a cold cocktail-looking thing, the other slipped carefully into Phil's, Dan was currently chatting with Chris about the new blood on stage, and laughing at his ridiculous comparisons.  
  
Apparently the 'new Dan' was a lot quieter and nervous - his name was Luke, and his voice was a lot softer, his posture less confident, but he swung into character like nobody's business, and Chris was really taking to him.  
  
"I mean, obviously he doesn't live up to you," Chris said, over-exaggerating his reassurance so it seemed jokey, but deep down he knew it was appreciated. "But he said he'd come along when he was done, you'll see what I mean."  
  
And after another half an hour, Dan did. The way this cast gelled together was almost beautiful; it wasn't like last year, because a lot of the cast this year were younger (Dean getting more confident with his hiring, apparently) but actors were nearly always the loud, friendly sort, so Dan had made a whole bunch of new friends by the time everyone had arrived.  
  
Happy chatter bubbled over in the group, and Dan relaxed totally, even with this new set of people, and he got to know Luke quite well, surprised at his initial quietness but loving his calm confidence.

However, as they reached their fourth round - not including the two drinks Dan had had when they first got there - Chris started clammering.

For a speech. From Dan.

“No.” Dan said, resolutely, but Chris’ badgering and the alcohol in his veins and the god damn eyes belonging to the most beautiful man in the world sat next to him - and _fuck it_. “ _Fine_. Now shut up.”

Of course, Chris’ loud cheers and the sudden clinking of his nail on glass (quiet, but audible), hushed everyone almost instantly, as everyone turned to stare at them.

“I actually wanted a few moments to prepare, but thank you, Chris.” Dan’s sarcasm didn’t go unnoticed, and the rest of the group laughed at him as he said it, the laughter in the room almost infectious, especially after they'd had a few drinks. Dan cleared his throat, and stood awkwardly, shuffling out of the booth and hoping that no-one in the pub other than the group in front of him would be listening. “Okay. Right.

“Honestly, it’s a bit of a miracle that Phil and I got together. And I don’t mean ‘oh, the fates aligned, it was destiny!’” Dan did a Carrie-like voice, grinning, causing a few more giggles, but he pressed on quickly, “No, I mean we’re both the most awkward pieces of shits on Earth. I don’t know if we actually exchanged any real conversation the first time we interacted, so it was just 45 minutes of Phil narrating the make up routine, and me trying not to faint in my seat, because ‘ _oh shit this guy is really pretty wow okay he’s very close oh my god keep it together_ ’-”

“Lies - you talked about Pokemon!” Chris heckled from his seat, causing a really dramatic sigh from Dan and more laughter from the group.

“Yes, _thank you_ Chris, just in case we didn’t sound quite nerdy enough, yes. We talked about Pokemon. But that was basically it for the first day, and the next few days, and it really took some force from a few select friends to get us to actually interact outside of work.

“All in all, it was a combined effort from the majority of the cast - including those who took bets on us, thanks Jack and Chris - to even get us to talk to each other, let alone for us to actually get together. I dunno what mystical force _that_ was - not even joking, that probably was some form of fate or destiny to get us that far-”

“How about the repressed sexual urges?” Chris called out, and Dan gave him a glare-to-end-all-glares.

“Chris fucking Kendall, would you like to come and give this speech yourself?”

“Alright, but first I’m gonna need to know who tops so that I can give the proper details.”

Closing his eyes momentarily, Dan then repeated the glare and brushed off the responsive giggles.

“No. Fine. Okay, just shut up, alright? You asked for this.”

Seemingly accepting this request, Chris sat back in his seat with a small smile on his face that indicated that this was exactly what he expected, and he looked genuinely happy for the pair to them.

“Right. Where was I? Shit, fate and destiny. That sounds really cliché and gross, so I’m gonna move on real quick.

“So basically we were two hopeless nerds, who didn’t know what we were doing and hadn’t been in proper relationships for a year and two years respectively. Maybe there was some level of sexual urges involved, I don’t know, but somehow, thanks to whatever God or superhero, we got together, and _fuck_ am I grateful for it.

“Without this show, we would never have met. Without the brilliant script, I’d never have wanted to be in it. If it wasn’t for Jack and Dean, I’d never have been hired. If it hadn’t been for Chris fucking Kendall, pestering the living shit out me every day until I texted Phil, or pushing us together at the opening night party, this wouldn’t have happened. I owe all of my current happiness to so many people, but mainly to the person who’s actually the other half of this relationship.”

Dan found a moment of courage, and looked Phil in the eye for the first time since he’d started his speech.

 _Fuck_. He was going to cry.

Phil’s face was so open and happy and emotional that Dan knew that if Phil made even the slightest remark in response, he was going to start crying. A lot.

They both acknowledged this with a single glance, and Dan knew he had to wrap it up.

“I love you a lot, Phil. I really don’t think there are many more ways I can say it, but I really fucking mean it. You are so thoughtful and compassionate and caring, and I never really feel like I can match you in that; I know they say everyone brings different things to a relationships, but sometimes I do wonder what exactly I bring. Apart from, obviously, my talent and my pretty face.” Dan joked, knowing that everyone else was beginning to sense his emotion as well, and knew it had to come to an end soon enough. “And I just want to thank you so sincerely for planning this, for supporting me through this past year, and for choosing to spend these months with me, when anyone else would have been just as lucky to have you. I know it’s selfish, but I’m really fucking glad that it wasn’t anyone else, because then they would have got to have the relationship that I’ve had with you instead, and honestly-”

Dan had to swallow here, knowing that this was going to be the end, and so he raised his glass a little.

“It’s been amazing.”

Phil stood up before Dan could sit down, kissing him enthusiastically, before hugging him hard, causing Dan to spill about half of his drink, but neither of them could care less. Cheering a little, the rest of the group were laughing and wolf-whistling, probably pissing off the rest of the pub as well, but no-one really seemed to notice. As the pair finally sat down, Dan watched Chris wipe away tears subtly - subtly enough that he was being genuine, and not taking the piss - before turning to congratulate them.

“You bastard.” He said, after the brief heartfelt communication, and Dan couldn’t help but grin.

“You asked for a speech, mate, you have literally no-one to blame but yourself.”

“I can blame you for being an emotional little shit with a flair for dramatics, is what I can do.” Chris pouted, but poked Dan in the side and congratulated them again, his smile genuine and true, and Dan knew that they would stay friends for a very long time.

After a few more congratulations from other people, Phil pulled Dan around to look at him, stealing him away a little by sliding them down the booth.

“You almost made me cry.” Was the first thing he said, almost in a whiny tone, but he looked almost deliriously happy.

“That’s the best way to do things.” Dan kissed him, chastely - because they were in public - but knowing that things were going to be good later that evening. “Obviously.”

“Where did you pull that from?”

“Well,” Dan said, his voice a little lower, conveying something mildly secretive. “I was saving that last bit for the Oscars.”

After a moment of staring at Dan in borderline awe, Phil finally said something; the love in his eyes was almost too overwhelming for Dan’s brain to comprehend.

“You fucking try it.” His voice was a little rough, and his grip on Dan’s hand was almost painful. “I’m not bawling my eyes out on national television. Because I will, and it’ll be seriously embarrassing, okay?”

Yes, Dan took this into account. He knew that if the possibility of an Oscar even briefly flitted into his future, he was going to practise the shit out of an Academy-award-friendly speech that thanked everyone properly, most of all Phil, and hopefully showed the whole world how amazing his incredible boyfriend was.

However, when the night came, and the speech happened, it didn’t matter what Dan had ‘taken into account’ or ‘planned’ - both of them cried the happiest tears of their lives as Dan got back to his seat, their proceeding hug being the tightest they’d ever had, and all could Phil could say, over and over again, was-

“I’m so proud of you, Dan. I’m so, _so_ proud.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> ok so these uploads have only spanned about a week, but i've been working on this fanfic since may last year, and it's the first long fic i've ever finished, so i'm really hecka proud of it. everyone who was involved is awesome (see my tumblr danielljameshowell for more specifics) and i appreciate every single person who liked/reblogged/kudos-ed/commented/read this. thank u for being a lovely community to share these things with and i'll see y'all in the next one!
> 
> p.s. even after a 50k phanfic im not over dan howell in make up why wont u give us what we want daniel gdi

**Author's Note:**

> this fic is in three parts, originally posted on my tumblr (danielljameshowell) which was created for the 'Phandom Big Bang' in 2015.


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